E-text prepared by Richard Tonsing, Fritz Ohrenschall, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images
generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)



Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
      file which includes the original illustrations.
      See 63959-h.htm or 63959-h.zip:
      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/63959/63959-h/63959-h.htm)
      or
      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/63959/63959-h.zip)


      Images of the original pages are available through
      Internet Archive. See
      https://archive.org/details/cu31924023537552


Transcriber’s note:

      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).





THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH


[Illustration:

  DANCING GIRL OF JEYPORE.

  Frontispiece.]


THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

Studies of Oriental Women

by

ELIZABETH COOPER

Author of “My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard,” “The Soul Traders,” etc.

Illustrated






New York
The Century Company

(All rights reserved)

(Printed in Great Britain)

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                CONTENTS


                                                       PAGE
                    INTRODUCTION                          9

            CHAPTER
                 I. EGYPTIAN WOMEN OF THE PAST           19

                II. THE MODERN EGYPTIAN WOMAN            39

               III. MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, POLYGAMY          56

                IV. THE WOMAN OF THE DESERT              69

                 V. INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE                   85

                VI. INDIAN HOME LIFE                    100

               VII. MARRIAGE—THE GOAL OF WOMAN          113

              VIII. INDIAN MOTHERHOOD                   130

                IX. WOMAN’S SORROW                      143

                 X. HYDERABAD AND THE MOHAMMEDAN WOMAN  154

                XI. MOHAMMEDANISM WITHIN THE ZENANA     170

               XII. BURMAH                              179

              XIII. BURMESE RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION   200

               XIV. THE LADY OF CHINA                   211

                XV. THE RED CHAIR OF MARRIAGE           240

               XVI. WHEN CHINESE WOMEN DIE              254

              XVII. CHANGING CHINA                      260

             XVIII. JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME              271

                    CONCLUSION                          307




                             ILLUSTRATIONS


 DANCING GIRL OF JEYPORE                                  _Frontispiece_

                                                             Facing page
 “TWO WOMEN SHALL BE GRINDING AT THE MILL”                             9

 EGYPTIAN WOMAN OF THE LOWER CLASS                                    19

 RAMESES AND HIS WIFE                                                 20

 A WATER-CARRIER                                                      36

 THE TAILOR                                                           44

 A WOMAN OF THE MASSES                                                64

 CHILDREN ON THE NILE                                                 66

 BEDOUIN WOMEN IN FRONT OF TENT                                       69

 A HOLY MAN, BENARES                                                  96

 CRADLE IN VILLAGE, BARODA                                           132

 INDIAN WOMEN SPINNING                                               148

 A CARRIAGE FOR WOMEN                                                154

 MOHAMMEDAN WOMEN, HYDERABAD                                         170

 HUSKING RICE IN A BURMESE VILLAGE                                   179

 BURMESE GIRL                                                        180

 DANCING AT A VILLAGE FESTIVAL, BURMAH                               183

 A BUDDHIST SCHOOL MANDALAY (SHOWING BEGGING-BOWL)                   194

 BURMESE BOY WITH TATTOOED LEGS                                      196

 _EN ROUTE_ TO A FESTIVAL, BURMAH                                    198

 A BURMESE WOMAN AND HER CIGAR                                       206

 BURMESE WORKING WOMAN                                               208

 GOLDEN PAGODA, MANDALAY                                             210

 CHINESE WOMEN WARMING HANDS AND FEET WITH BRAZIERS                  214

 CHINESE WOMEN AND CHAIR-BEARERS                                     218

 BOUND FEET OF CHINESE WOMAN                                         221

 AN OLD-FASHIONED CHINESE GIRLS’ SCHOOL                              224

 WHEELBARROW AND COOLIE—USED IN PLACE OF WAGONS IN TOWNS
   AND COUNTRY VILLAGES NEAR SHANGHAI                                236

 RAIN-COATS OF CHINESE WORKMEN                                       246

 RICE-BOATS ON CANAL, CHINA                                          260

 JAPANESE CHILDREN PLAYING                                           276

 AN OUTDOOR KITCHEN IN JAPAN                                         290

[Illustration:

  “TWO WOMEN SHALL BE GRINDING AT THE MILL.”

  To face p. 9.]




                              INTRODUCTION

                         “What thou biddest
            Unargued I obey. So God ordains;
            God is _thy_ law, thou mine: to know no more
            Is woman’s happiest knowledge, and her praise.”


This is the creed of the woman of the East to-day. It is the same as it
has been for centuries; it will continue the same for centuries to come.
Indeed, it is a question whether the Oriental woman, with all her
intellectual and social advance which is already beginning, will be able
ever to free herself from those traditional and inherent influences
which have been wrought into the very warp and woof of Eastern humanity.

The Eastern woman is primarily a traditionalist. She is more closely
bound by hereditary tendency than the woman of the West. One of her
outstanding characteristics has lain for years in her dependency and
passive reliance upon her husband for economic support and protection.
Her very seclusion means to her, not that which the word would connote
to the Westerner, slavery or imprisonment; to her it is rather the
mantle of protective care and interest thrown over her by her lord and
master. It has helped to make her feminine, as it has naturally added to
her inefficiency as far as any work is concerned that bears a similitude
of masculine activity.

With the exception of the Burmese woman, and to an appreciable and
growing extent the women of Japan, the Oriental woman has been
influenced and moulded by her economic necessities. The Eastern attitude
toward woman, which in general has been to keep her ignorant and to
consider that her charms other than those relating to her physical
attractions are minute, has brought about a feminine type peculiar to
itself. The result is a woman who outside of the home has no power of
gaining a livelihood, and who as a natural consequence has turned her
whole thought, emotion, and imagination upon her domestic affairs.
Furthermore, we find in such countries of the Orient as Burmah and
Japan, where women are solving the problem of self-support, that they
have also been able, not only to have greater freedom, but also, to a
certain extent, they have demanded the right to choose their own mates
and regulate the laws concerning their home life. For instance, in each
of these countries the wife has the right of divorcing her husband—a
right denied the woman of other Oriental lands. The property rights of
women in these lands, where women are just beginning to be wage-earners,
are also clearly set forth in their civil codes, giving justice to the
women.

The realm of the Eastern woman is primarily the realm of the home. She
has the true spirit of the bee; she considers the collective good of the
household before her own. Her great vocation is to be a wife and mother.
She attends personally to her household duties, and domestic service is
to her not a disgrace. Her children are to her a veritable life-work.
She looks after them personally, superintends their every act, and
watches closely their development. Even the high lady of the East does
not consider it demeaning to cook with her own hands that which she
knows will appeal to the taste of her family. Cooking, indeed, is
regarded as a fine art in the East, and recipes are handed down like
heirlooms from mother to daughter along with the family jewels.

The Eastern woman is honoured by the honour of her household. It is her
business to make it possible for her husband and her sons to advance,
and she shines in the reflected light of their achievements. She has not
been taught, neither has she any suspicion of the Western ambition to
make name and fame for herself. There is a certain delight and
satisfaction in living behind the veil which one can hardly appreciate
from the Western point of view. That this Eastern feminine regards her
success as domestic rather than social is abundantly proved to any one
who lives intimately in touch with the women of these countries.

The one great cry which goes up from the heart of every Oriental woman,
regardless of place or station, in any home between Algiers and Tokio,
is, “Give me sons!” It is this desire for men-children, and the belief
on the part of the woman that this is the primal and ultimate destiny of
womanhood, that has made marriage the universal custom for all women
throughout the East. Rarely indeed do you find an unmarried woman. In
India marriage is assured by betrothal in early childhood; and even in
those countries where education and Western influence are raising the
age limit of marriages one finds no diminution in the general feeling
that woman’s world is the home, with her children about her.

This devotion to the purely domestic realm has left the woman a victim
to ignorance, superstition, and the many evils that follow in their
train. One finds the same superstition working in the minds of the women
in Cairo, in Calcutta, and in Peking. The Egyptian mother dresses her
boy in rags to guard him from the baneful influence of the “evil eye,”
while the woman of China pierces her son’s ears and places a ring
therein, to deceive the gods and make them think he is a girl. The woman
of Algiers will buy charms and magic symbols to bring her the blessing
of motherhood, while the woman of Japan visits shrines and holy places,
where her faith and superstition are traded upon by those who understand
the weakness of their womenkind. She has so long been accustomed to rely
upon her superstitions, her emotions, and to use her intuition in the
place of a brain, that the present beginnings in education have been
hampered. That, however, she will prove herself capable in the realm of
mental training is proven by the fact that, especially in Egypt and in
Japan, modern schools for girls are becoming really popular movements in
the development of these countries. Every advance in the education of
men adds to the possibility of intellectual emancipation for women.

During long ages Eastern women have been denied the right to think for
themselves and have been compelled to feel their way emotionally, and
their power to feel thus has become abnormally developed at the expense
of their power to judge or reason. The woman of the Orient is a woman
swayed by emotions, by the heart instead of by the intellect.

There is a logical line of connection to be traced among the modern
women of the East. Her phases of development have been the inevitable
outcome of influences to which she has been taught to submit as a duty.
Her religious sense—the strong spiritual craving that is deep within the
heart of all women—has been utilized as a means of influencing her to
yield implicit obedience to her mankind, whether he be father, brother,
or husband. She has made him, in a certain sense, her god, and in
yielding all to him she has ceased to think in the terms of her own
individuality, accepting the common opinion that the Eastern woman lives
for her home and the amusement and the material comfort of her husband.
A mental deficiency bill was passed upon her centuries ago, and the laws
command her husband to keep her under restraint. Her menfolks expect her
to be deficient, and have carefully guarded her from opportunities of
becoming otherwise. Her husband has not associated her with any of his
outside life, and she has found little or nothing in his conversation to
stimulate or to broaden her mind. Considering her as a being who only
understands her children and the petty gossip of the women’s quarters,
he has deprived her of the mental possibilities which have reached the
men of the East. He has not only tried to teach her not to think for
herself, but the Eastern masculine has endeavoured to make her
understand that she cannot think. Nor is this tendency entirely
abolished by modern education. The young girl fresh from her school in
Cairo or Calcutta, where she has caught glimpses of a new world, and
where her brain has been slightly awakened, marries and goes into the
traditional home, where her faith in herself is gradually diminished by
living constantly in the atmosphere of ignorance and superstition which
still rules so largely in her woman’s world. Finally, she gives up
trying, resigning herself to the standard of the man-made world in which
she finds herself, and her husband becomes her keeper in every sense of
the word.

The Eastern woman naturally tends in this way to lose her self-reliance,
which she is not allowed to exercise. She often decides few matters for
herself, even the small details of her daily life being settled by her
husband. The effect is insidious, but none the less relaxing, since the
faculty of responsibility, like every other faculty, is strengthened
only by exercise, and passes away with disuse.

Can the woman of the East be awakened to an advanced development without
harm to herself? Within her is found an enormous amount of suppressed
capacity for good and evil. This suppression, which has been her cue for
generations, possesses great dynamic power. Force becomes dangerous when
confined; it should be directed, and unless properly guided and
controlled, when it does burst forth, as it is bound to do with these
women who are becoming educated and learning their power, it is likely
to riot widely, with havoc for its effect. The Eastern woman who has
traded upon her emotional nature for her livelihood, who has used these
same emotions to keep her husband in a land where divorce is easy and
where polygamy is practised by many, may be guided by her feelings
rather than her intellect, using her new-found freedom to bring her
lasting unhappiness instead of the joy which she now believes is lying
just outside her doors. In India advance has come too rapidly at times,
and the woman in her desire to slavishly imitate her sisters from the
West has shocked the conservative traditions of her nation, and thereby
greatly retarded her cause. The Egyptian woman when in England or France
becomes almost ludicrous in her attempts to be like the European woman,
forgetting that she lacks the foundation of the years of freedom and
equality with men which bring judgment and confidence to the woman of
the Western world.

The woman of the Orient is awakening and is setting herself the task to
consider what is best to be done. How can she remedy the deficiency of
the social life of her land? The case is not a hopeless one by any
means, even though her capacities and wonderful possibilities have lain
dormant for so long. Many of these women now see the things that are
wrong; they see the iniquity of a system in which they are not allowed
to choose their own mate; they see the crying wrongs of their antiquated
marriage and divorce laws, made for another period than the twentieth
century—laws which do not fit the present conditions, however successful
they may have been in other times. These women are learning to respect
themselves and their position, learning to appreciate and value the
weight of their majorities, and some are having the courage to speak
out. These bolder ones are being punished for their intrepidity; but it
does not check them. The cause for which they are working is gradually
becoming more and more possible with the advent of education and Western
influences, which are causing the present-day educated men of the Orient
to require a certain amount of education in their wives and daughters.
As this new order comes to the land of the Nile and the Ganges, the
old-time woman who passed her days lounging on the divans, eating
sweets, drinking coffee, and gossiping with servants and friends as
ignorant as herself, will pass away. The new woman of the East will
never be a suffragette; she will never attend mass meetings nor carry
banners marked “Votes for Women”; indeed, it would be as incongruous to
think of these sheltered women doing such a thing as to imagine the long
row of mummies at the Museum of Cairo suddenly starting a procession
down the aisles of the museum. These women, however, are setting up a
high standard for themselves, eager to accept all the Western world has
to offer them by way of education and growth, while they feel that they
have the capacity to attain the objects of their new ambitions.

In all this change, will the Oriental woman remain the same as regards
the deepest things in her nature? Will she keep her innate sense of
modesty, her womanliness, her love of home and children, her feminine
qualities which seem to us of the Western world almost a weakness, but
which comprise her appealing charm? We cannot but feel that although the
woman of the East may change radically in the outward expression of her
life, inwardly she will remain the same. Indeed, it would be a great
mistake if the Eastern woman became satisfied with any mere superficial
imitation of her Western sisters. She would lose her birthright. She
would lose the consummate opportunity of being an Oriental in an
Oriental world, and bringing out of her treasure things new and old for
the benefit of the women of every race. Her message to the world of the
West in the devotion and the keeping of the home, in the love and pride
of children, in her self-effacement for the good of the family, is a
high message and in no period has it been more insistently needed. It is
this contribution which the woman of the Orient will bring in return for
the education and enlightenment from the Occident.

If the Western woman comes to the Oriental bringing in her hands the
fair gifts of intellectual advancement and broadened life, her Eastern
sister will not be her debtor if she, by example, presents in return the
even more precious charms of obedience, modesty, and loyalty which
fundamentally are the priceless jewels in the crown of the world’s
womanhood.

[Illustration:

  EGYPTIAN WOMAN OF THE LOWER CLASS.

  To face p. 19.]




                        The Harim and the Purdah




                               CHAPTER I
                       EGYPTIAN WOMEN OF THE PAST


The word Egypt opens the Book of Romance to the traveller in the East,
and he longs to come under the spell of its mysterious grandeur, and
gaze upon the monuments which will speak to him of the power and
splendour of a people long since gathered to their gods. It is a land in
which to dream dreams and see visions. The temples, broken columns, and
great pylons call with a voice that must be heard even by the prosaic
tourist, and the hands he sees painted upon the walls of Denderah or
Deirel Bahari will beckon him when sitting in office, club, or home, far
from the dazzling sands or burning sun of Africa.

The charm of the land of the Pharaohs is very real, and it is hard to
speak of Egyptian life in a calm and lucid style, or free oneself from
extravagant descriptions.

Egypt and its fascination are favourite themes for novelists and writers
of travel, and yet in spite of a good deal of general knowledge we
remain curiously ignorant of the Egyptian woman, from the point of view
of her moral and mental development. In common with women of other
Oriental lands, she has been an object of mystery to the Western world.
We know that in the olden time, in the days of the Pharaohs, she held an
important place in the life of her world. We see her pictures on the
tombs, temples were erected in her honour, and we know that there were
queens who in their day governed their country with dignity and rare
ability.

In former days the purity of the blood of the royal line was assured by
the marriage of a brother and sister, the queen reigning equally with
the king. If a queen of royal birth took as her consort a male not
descended directly from a royal mother, even though his father might
have been a Pharaoh, at the death of his wife he was compelled to
abdicate in favour of the son or daughter who could call the queen
“mother.” This was shown when Thotmes I was compelled to resign his
crown in favour of that great Queen Hatshepsu, his daughter, who for
twenty years governed Egypt. Although her reign was a stormy one because
of her half-brothers who claimed the throne, her name and features
erased from all the monuments, and omitted from the official tablets and
chronological records, yet enough was left to show that her power had
been great and that she commanded the attention of the world. It is said
that Hatshepsu had herself everywhere depicted as a man, wearing the
dress and even the beard of the stronger sex, perhaps hoping in this way
to gain a greater allegiance of her people.

[Illustration:

  RAMESES AND HIS WIFE.

  To face p. 20.]

One of the most interesting temples along the Nile is that of the first
woman ruler of Egypt of whom we have accurate knowledge. One rides over
the hot sands beneath a burning sun to a series of great terraces and
broken white columns against a background of tiger-coloured precipices.
This beautiful temple of the XVIIIth Dynasty, called by the Egyptians
“the Sublime of the Sublime,” was dedicated to Amen Ra and his companion
gods, Hathor and Anubis, but it was really erected to commemorate the
glorious reign of a great queen.

Another woman who influenced Egypt was the mother of Amenophis IV, the
great reformer. He disestablished the State religion, some say at the
instance of his mother; confiscated the lands and destroyed the power of
the priests of Amon who were becoming all-powerful; and established the
worship of one God.

Solomon evidently held the Egyptians in high favour. He had many wives
before he married a princess of Egypt, but we hear of no palaces being
built especially for any of them, nor of the worship of their gods being
introduced into Jerusalem. Yet we are told that a magnificent palace was
built for Pharaoh’s daughter and that she was permitted, although
contrary to the laws of Israel, to worship the gods of her country.

Then there was Hypatia, an Alexandrine, who established a school of
philosophy where learned men from all parts of the world came to listen
to her words of wisdom; and in the British Museum there is a manuscript
of the Old and New Testament, written on parchment immediately after the
Council of Nice, by an Egyptian woman, which goes to prove that men did
not possess all the knowledge nor learning of their time.

We all know the story of Cleopatra and the part she played in the
downfall of her country, and history abounds with tales narrating the
bravery, courage, and charm of Egyptian women.

Women are also associated with the religion of this old land. The
worship of Isis was as general as the worship of her brother Osiris, and
this goddess is reverenced as the representation of true and loyal
wifehood.

Another woman, Athor, the goddess of love, who was called the “Great
Mother” and served as the protectress of earthly mothers, was good and
beautiful, lovely and gentle, the goddess of love and joy. Neith was
worshipped as the goddess of art and learning. Maat was the goddess of
truth and justice; and in ancient times judges, when trying cases, held
a small figure of the goddess Maat in their hands, and touched the
persons acquitted with it, to show that they had won their cause.

There was Taur, the goddess of evil, and Sekhet, typical of the
scorching, destructive power of the sun, and many minor goddesses whose
emblems, seen on columns and walls of the ancient ruins, tell us that in
those days woman was thought fit to represent Divinity.

The women of ancient Egypt were evidently not secluded, as is shown by
the story of Pharaoh’s daughter who was going with her train of maids to
bathe when she found Moses. The story of Potiphar’s wife and Joseph
would never have been told in modern times, as a man-servant would not
have dared to go to the women’s quarters.

This valley of the Nile has always been the home of mystery and charm.
The inscriptions on its tombs and temples have been deciphered and
receive much attention in modern days; but they are not more interesting
than is the woman of Egypt, who, as we have learned, enjoyed greater
liberties and received more honour than is the heritage of her modern
daughters. It is difficult to understand her, as even yet she represents
traditions and the habits of dead centuries, fit to be relegated to the
past.

She is the Sphinx of this Oriental land, and will not easily give to the
world her secrets.


                         THE MOHAMMEDAN WOMAN.

When first one visits Egypt, romance seems to peer from beneath the veil
of each black-robed figure, and mystery lurks behind the intricate
carving that covers the windows where one is sure some languid beauty
sits waiting for the moment when her lord and master will be gone, that
she may wave a white hand to the passionate suitor below. This idea of
Egypt is generally derived from highly coloured and erotic novels which
always make this country alluring and often sensual. To one who has been
given this highly seasoned food for his imagination to feed upon the
modern Egypt, with its great glaring hotels, its motor-cars, its shops
that might be in London or New York, is a great disappointment.

Illusions will again be lost if one is permitted to enter the beautiful
homes on the fashionable drives of Cairo, for they are not Eastern in
any sense, nor is there anything about them to indicate that their
owners are Orientals. They express no individuality, and might belong to
any person of means whether in the East or the West. The drawing-rooms
are furnished in French fashion, with gilded chairs, a grand piano,
hangings and curtains made in England or France. Great glass chandeliers
holding the glaring electric lights express the cosmopolitanism which
the mistress feels she must show the world, in order that she may not be
considered as belonging to the old school of Egyptian womanhood.

One hears the word harim and instantly conjures up an Arabian Nights
picture of rare hangings, subdued lights, beautiful odalisques lounging
on soft divans, slaves, incense, and a general air of sensuousness
pervading the entire place. I read a book not long ago written by a
well-known woman writer who says, “I am thankful to say that I have
never been within a harim except twice, and the memory of that dreadful
place will rest with me for many years.” Yet she admits that on her
first visit to this “dreadful place” she had no interpreter and could
only draw upon her imagination to give the women she saw their position
in the elaborate household. This imagination was evidently a vivid one,
as she believed that many women she saw were “the poor deluded slaves”
of the master of the house, while quite likely they were the innumerable
relatives and woman-servants that always throng the rich man’s home.

In reality, in present-day modern Cairo, if one enters the harim of the
better class, or of the official class, one is greeted by a hostess
dressed in the latest French creation, tea is served, while the politics
of the world are discussed easily in either French or English by the
polished, up-to-date Egyptian women.

The word harim is much misunderstood by the people of the Western world.
The Arabic word harim simply means the women’s quarters. The selam-lik
are the apartments in which the men of the household have their business
offices, receive their friends, and pass their time, while the harim-lik
are the apartments reserved for the female members and children of the
family. The literal meaning is exclusiveness, seclusion, privacy. In its
restricted sense it embodies the two meanings of the women of the
household and their exclusive apartments. In the wider acceptance of the
term we understand by harim an established social system deriving its
sanction from a body of laws promulgated by the Arabian prophet
Mohammed. When a woman is harim it means that she is secluded, and we
hear the expression in regard to schoolgirls. “Yes, my daughters go to
school,” a mother will say, “but they are kept harim.”

In Persia and Turkey the word zenana is used, and in India the common
form of expression for the woman who is not seen by any male except
those of her immediate family is, “She is purdah-nashim, or simply
purdah.” The purdah is the screen that shuts her from the outside world,
and the Oriental, whatever his race, whether in Egypt, Turkey, or India,
whether he calls it the harim, purdah, or zenana, speaks of it in his
literature and poetry as the “Sanctuary of Conjugal Happiness.”

One can live years in the East and get little idea of the life of the
Moslem woman of the better class. In Egypt ten million out of the twelve
million inhabitants are followers of the prophet Mohammed, and to
understand at all the Eastern woman one must learn something of the
religion that dominates the entire life of the Mohammedan. The actions
of the Moslem woman, whether in India, Arabia, Egypt, Persia, or
Algiers, are controlled and forced to comply with the laws made by the
Arabian prophet of the seventh century, and even to-day his word
practically governs each act of the domestic life as well as the world
outside the home.

Before Mohammed’s time there were no social, religious, nor educational
institutions in Arabia, as we understand them. Unlimited polygamy,
slavery, drunkenness, polytheism, gambling, child murder, and plunder
existed. He taught that there was but one God, forbade child murder,
limited the number of wives to four, forbade the use of intoxicating
liquors, gambling, usury, and gave women a definite legal status.

The reforms inaugurated by this wonderful man effected vast and marked
improvement in the position of the women of the Eastern world. Her
status had degenerated from that held in ancient times until her
position was extremely degraded. She was the chattel of her father,
brother, or husband, like his camel or his sheep, and could be bought
and sold as any other chattel. She was an integral part of her husband’s
estate and was inherited by his heirs. The son inherited his father’s
wives and often married them. This Mohammed severely censured, and laid
down most exacting laws in regard to the women lawful for a man to
marry. He says:—

  And marry not them whom your fathers have married; for this is a
  shame and hateful, and an evil way—though what is past may be
  allowed. Forbidden to you are your mothers and your daughters, and
  your sisters, and your aunts, both on your father’s and your
  mother’s side, and your foster-mothers and your foster-sisters, and
  the mothers of your wives, and your stepdaughters who are your
  wards, born of your wives, and the wives of your sons, and ye may
  not have two sisters.

He is severely criticized that he authorized polygamy, but when one
remembers the wild, lawless people whom he governed, it seems that he
showed extreme moderation in limiting the number of wives to four. He
added that a man might possess the slaves within the household, and his
followers say he was compelled to put in this postscript in order to
quiet the unrest that was caused by the new domestic regulation which
was so contrary to all ideas then controlling his immediate world.

He expressly stated that if a man could not deal justly and love equally
all his wives, he must then marry but one. All true believers quote this
as meaning that Mohammed really intended his people to be monogamous, as
it was fully known that no man could love four women with equal ardour.
The husband is also enjoined to partition his time equally amongst his
families, and there is a saying that if a man inclines particularly to
one of the women of his household, in the day of judgment he will
incline to one side by being a paralytic.

He allowed women to inherit property, although he gave a girl only half
the inheritance of a boy. A wife may inherit one-fourth of her husband’s
estate if there are no children, and one-eighth if there are children;
if there is more than one wife, the eighth is divided equally amongst
them. A man may inherit one-half of his wife’s property in the event of
her being childless, but only one-quarter if she leaves children, and
neither one can disinherit the other.

Yet the laws show clearly that a woman was not legally the equal of a
man, as it takes the testimony of two women to equal that of one man,
and the price of a woman’s life was only fifty camels instead of the
hundred camels demanded for the life of a man. There is a reason for
this other than the mere disregard of women. Those days were lawless
days, when tribe was fighting tribe and the non-fighting women were
naturally not held in such esteem as were the men who were needed to
fight in the continuous tribal wars.

Moslems claim that the Mohammedan woman is more truly protected by the
laws of Mohammed than are the women of Western countries. She can
dispose of any property that she may receive, either from her family or
her husband, as she sees fit. She is not responsible for the debts of
her husband; she can sue and be sued; or she can make contracts or enter
into any business undertaking without consulting her husband; and she
may even take him before the courts if he does not live up to an
agreement he may have made with her.

Yet this wily Eastern prophet did not believe in the absolute equality
of women; as he says:—

  Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with which God
  hath gifted one above the other, and on account of the outlay they
  make from their substance for them;

and he warns his followers from making too large settlements on them or
in giving them too many valuable gifts:

  And entrust not to the incapable the substance which God hath placed
  with you for their support; but maintain them therewith, and clothe
  them, and speak to them with kindly speech.

A Moslem woman is supposed to share the responsibilities of life as well
as its pleasures. In the case of destitute parents, sons are required to
contribute two-thirds towards their support, while the daughters must
add their third. This is a very wise law, because Egypt, like
practically all Oriental countries, makes no provision from its public
funds for the maintenance of the poor or old. Each family must care for
its own helpless.

Many reasons are given for the laws compelling the women of Mohammedan
lands to be veiled and to pass their life within the inner apartments
reserved for their especial use. Some say that Mohammed caused women to
be veiled because of his jealousy of his young wife Ayesha; others claim
that the prophet, becoming enamoured by the beauty of his adopted son’s
wife, caused her to be divorced, afterwards marrying her, contrary to
the laws he himself had made; he wished to protect men from being
subjected to the temptation which had overtaken him and had brought upon
him the displeasure of his people. But the seclusion of women was found
in Asia, in ancient Rome, in Syria, and even in Athens, long before the
time of Mohammed. It was in practice amongst many Oriental nations from
the earliest times, and quite likely Mohammed simply adopted the customs
of the people with whom he came in contact on his conquering tours.

The seclusion of women, especially among the nomads, can be traced to
the warlike habits of the people. In times of war the enemy would first
of all carry away the women, children, and cattle of the tribe with whom
they were fighting. In order to protect the helpless they were kept in
inner rooms. The richer and stronger the family, the more secluded were
the women, and it became a mark of caste to be kept within the women’s
quarters, or protected. Thus what first originated as a necessity became
afterwards a matter of aristocracy, and the man who could keep his women
strictly harim was looked upon as higher in the social scale than one
who was compelled, from economic reasons or otherwise, to allow the
females of his household to come and go freely in the world.

An Egyptian woman, from the time when she is seven or eight years old,
never shows her face unveiled to any man except her father, her brother,
or her husband. No chance is given the followers of the Arabian prophet
to have the little flirtations that are so dear to the heart of many of
her Western sisters. Mohammed says:—

  And speak to the believing women that they refrain their eyes and
  display not their ornaments, except those which are external; and
  that they throw their veils over their bosoms, and display not their
  ornaments except to their husbands, or their fathers, or their
  husbands’ fathers, or their sons, or their husbands’ sons, or their
  brothers or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their
  women, or their slaves or their children. And let them not strike
  their feet together so as to discover their hidden ornaments.

The present-day Mohammedan woman observes this law more strictly than
was at first intended, even to not being seen by the father of her
husband. I know an Egyptian woman who is never seen by her father-in-law
except on the first day of the year, when he calls upon her to wish her
the joys of the coming year. She enters the room closely veiled and
offers him the season’s greetings, then leaves without further
conversation. I was calling upon an Indian Mohammedan woman who could
not enter the room until her father-in-law had left it, as it would have
been a serious breach of etiquette for him to see her.

This seclusion does not rest heavily upon the Mohammedan woman, as she
considers it the desire of her husband to protect her, and she would be
the first to resent the breaking of her seclusion, as showing that she
had lost value in his eyes. She lives for no one except her family, is
supposed to be of no interest to any one else, it being a great breach
of social decorum for any male member of a family to even inquire about
her. A man would never say to another man, “Is your wife well?” He would
say, “Is your household well?” And the husband would never speak of his
“wife” to another man, but would speak of his “house,” which would
naturally include the female occupants.

The harim is the “Holy of Holies” in the Moslem world. Even a police
official would hardly dare to penetrate the women’s quarters in search
of a criminal. When a man has retired to his harim he is free from any
disturbing influence from the outside world. If a friend or enemy should
call and servants would say that the master was in the harim, the caller
would be compelled to leave or wait until the master was disposed to
enter again the selam-lik, or rooms assigned to the male members of the
household.

The greatest evil in the harim life lies in the dreadful seclusion and
the paralysing monotony. Many of the older women are unable to read and
write, and they pass their days in weary idleness and a vacuous routine
which is only broken by visits to women friends as mentally impoverished
as themselves. Not being allowed the friendship of the opposite sex,
they are denied the stimulation of the mind which would no doubt result
from the interchange of ideas with men who come in contact with the
outside world. Naturally the intellectual development is restricted, and
this starving of the mentality of the women must have a result
detrimental to the rising generation.

Seclusion also makes a woman very much more the actual possession of her
husband than she would be if allowed to come and go in the world, to
know her rights and the means by which to enforce them. Although the
laws are very much in her favour, in regard to property rights
especially, it takes a woman of more than ordinary courage and
intelligence to break away from the walls which encircle her and parade
her troubles in open court. We are told of the wonderful laws allowing
the woman to dispose of her property as she wishes; but we are not told
that she may give this property to her husband, and when once within the
harim, pressure is often brought compelling the woman to give all that
she possesses to her husband, making her doubly helpless and wholly
within his power.

They have a proverb that a woman must always answer the call of her
husband, “even if she is at the oven.” Her happiness depends entirely
upon the treatment she receives from him. His visits to the harim are
the only breaks in the monotony of her life, and he brings to her the
only touch she may have with the great man-world outside. By a few men
the wives are treated as if they were intellectual equals, but these are
few and far between. The average Oriental treats his womenfolk as if
they were upon a lower plane than himself, “brought up amongst ornaments
and contentious without cause.”

One would judge that, handicapped as they are, Moslem women would take
no part in the political or social life of their country, but facts
prove that they can rise to great heights and exhibit rare courage and
executive powers in time of need. Ayesha, the favourite wife of
Mohammed, showed an instance of bravery and courage that might belong to
women of any land. When Ali, the cousin of the prophet, rebelled against
the successors of Mohammed, Ayesha took the field against him,
commanding the troops in person at the “Battle of the Camel,” and in
later days they have shown that the restrictions of the harim do not
deaden the fires that burn in women’s breasts when tyranny or oppression
rules their land.

In Persia, where Mohammedanism in its strictest sect has sway, the women
have been known to rise in force and demand the rights of their people
when all the efforts of the men have failed. In 1861, at the time of the
great famine, foodstuffs rose to an exorbitant price, because of a few
greedy officials who were enriching themselves at the expense of their
starving countrymen. It was impossible to bring the matter before the
Shah by the methods generally employed, but the women rose, and one day
thousands of them surrounded his carriage as he was returning from a
hunting trip, and stating the wrongs of his people, demanded that he
should make an investigation. The Shah was thoroughly frightened at the
sight of this unprecedented exhibition on the part of his usually unseen
subjects, and promised all they asked, and, what was more wonderful,
kept his promise. The leaders of the party who were causing the distress
were beheaded, and the price of bread was diminished by half within
twelve hours. It is only a few years ago that the women of Persia
confronted the President of the Assembly in his hall, and tearing aside
their veils and producing revolvers, confessed their decision to kill
their husbands and sons and add their own dead bodies to the sacrifice
if the deputies should waver in their duties to uphold the liberties of
the Persian people.

[Illustration:

  A WATER-CARRIER.

  To face p. 36.]

These Moslem women display a fortitude and courage that is almost
fanatical in times of persecution. Thousands in Persia have given their
lives for their faith in Baha Ullah, the leader of a sect of reformed
Mohammedans. They have been dragged from the harims to the public
market-places, where they have been subjected to unheard of indignities
before having the privilege of dying for their faith. They have also
been compelled to sit in rows facing the public execution grounds while
their husbands and sons were beheaded before their eyes, but even the
torture and death of those they loved did not cause them to waver from
what they believed to be right. The story of one woman exemplifies the
fanatical courage that will dominate such a shut-in woman, when in some
dim, tragic hour she has been compelled to give her contribution in the
life she loved to her religious cause. In Tabriz one day a crowd of
women were seated facing the executioner’s block, and amongst them a
delicate, dainty woman who had been protected all her life within the
harim of one of the prominent men of Tabriz, but whose death had left
his women helpless to bear the brunt of his enemy’s wrath. Chance had
made this enemy the city Governor, and he remembered that the family of
the man he hated even in death were followers of Baha Ullah. On this
morning in June the mother was brought to see the death of her
fourteen-year-old son, her only child. When the executioner had done his
work, the head was tossed into her lap, and she was told “Take back your
son.” She stood up, and holding the loved head in her hands, held it
towards the sky, as if to give it as an offering to the God who seemed
to have deserted her in her hour of need, looked long into the closing
eyes, then threw it to the official’s feet, saying, “I do not take back
what I give my God!” and turning quickly, took her place among the
sorrow-maddened women.

Her cousin, who told me the story and who was a witness to the scene,
said to me: “It is impossible for a Western woman to understand a Moslem
woman. Perhaps because of our exclusion and the lack of means of
self-expression, we have over-developed our inner emotional natures,
which at times of sorrow burst forth like a hidden flame. We not only
gave our lives in those dread days of Tabriz, but what is worse, we gave
the lives of those we loved—and still lived on.”

The women of Egypt have as yet had no reason to rise up _en masse_ and
show what they may do in times of national distress. It is unusual for
the women of any Mohammedan land to usurp the prerogatives of men. They
are fundamentally intensely feminine, the home their only domain.
Sa’adi, the Persian poet, said:—

  No happiness comes to the house of him whose hen hath crowed like a
  cock.

It will be many years before the Egyptian woman joins the ranks of the
militant suffragettes, and tries to blow up the Pyramids or deface the
walls of Egypt’s famous temples in the spirit of emulation and zeal for
_the Cause_.




                               CHAPTER II
                       THE MODERN EGYPTIAN WOMAN


The conservative woman of Egypt prides herself that she never leaves her
home. I know several ladies well advanced in years who say they have
never been outside their homes since they were brought there as brides.
An Eastern household is composed of many people, and this seclusion of
the women does not cause such loneliness as would be felt by a Western
woman if thus closely confined always to the home. In the East the
patriarchal life prevails, and the financially fortunate member of the
family finds himself supporting an immense army of poor relations, who
act in all capacities, from maids in the kitchen to the servants at the
door. They expect little or nothing as wages, but they _do_ expect that
the prosperous member of their clan or family will provide clothing,
food, and a roof beneath which they may live.

In all Egyptian homes of the better class there are many servants. They
are not the competent, trained servants to which we are accustomed, and
it takes many of them to accomplish what one well-trained servant will
do in England or America. They have no system, each servant doing his
task in his own appointed time and in his own way. Within the harim the
servants are generally women, and they are on much more familiar terms
with the inmates than are servants in the West. They take on a feeling
of equality with their mistresses, taking part in the conversation when
guests are present, entering doors without knocking, and generally
considering themselves as part of the family. Mohammed taught that all
true believers are free and equal—the servant the equal of his master.
This is one of the reasons that the traveller is often surprised by
having the donkey-boy offer his hand when saying good-bye. He does not
intend it as an impertinence; he simply wishes to bid his patron “God
speed” in the Western manner.

The women of the harims take much time to dress, and spend long hours in
the public baths, if they do not possess that luxury at home. They take
great care of their skin, using all the arts to keep it soft and
unwrinkled. They have not yet learned the charm of beautiful hands, and
the manicurist has not yet penetrated the harim, but it is only a
question of time when she will arrive, as the Egyptian woman seizes with
avidity every means of improving her personal appearance.

Many of them tint their straight black locks with henna, by making a
paste which is allowed to dry on the hair for twenty-four hours, then
removed. This, when used not too freely, gives a charming glint of
reddish gold to the thick hair, and utterly obliterates any trace of
age. The henna-tinted locks are not seen as much as formerly, as the
custom is passing out with the advent of the newer generation, and is
mainly to be seen on the older women or the women of the desert. In
former times the nails of the hands were tinted a deep orange, but this
also is being relegated to the “things that were,” as the young girls
are beginning to see that instead of a beautifier, it makes the hands
appear most untidy. I have seen an old lady with her fingers stained a
deep brownish yellow to the first joint, the palms of her hands, the
toes, and even the bottoms of the feet coloured with the henna paste.

The house dress of the Egyptian woman is a long _négligé_ made in an
empire form or what we used to call a “Mother Hubbard,” with the
fullness of the cloth gathered to a much-trimmed yoke, and ending in a
train that sweeps the floor. The wearer may follow her fancy in the
choice of goods with which these dresses are made. The ordinary dress
worn every day is of some material easily laundered, but the gown for
gala occasions is often most elaborate, made of rich silks, satins, or
brocades with great figures in gold or silver. Many of them appear as if
made of cloth originally intended for furniture covering. If she has a
wide range from which to select the material for her dresses, she also
is not restricted in the choice of colours, as each woman indulges in
whatever shades she most admires, and a party of women with their red,
blue, yellow, and mauve creations look like a party of animated dolls
dressed for a fancy bazaar.

The hair is braided in one or two braids and allowed to hang down the
back, sometimes tied with strings on which dangle gold coins or balls. A
veil is always worn over the head, hanging down to the waist line. It is
very graceful and adds to the dignity of the Egyptian woman. With the
poor this head covering is a large piece of cotton with a gay-coloured
border, and even ladies wear in the morning a cotton veil, but on dress
occasions it is of chiffon or net elaborately bordered with gold or
silver, or in some cases sewn with sequins, very similar to the shawls
offered by the vendors in front of the big hotels.

The feet are slipped into toe slippers that can easily be removed when
entering the living-rooms or when sitting upon the divans. In the matter
of footwear there is a wide range from which to choose. From the wooden
bath clog to the tiny heelless covering for the toes, embroidered in
gold or silver or even tiny seed pearls, the Egyptian woman’s slipper is
a thing of beauty and dainty femininity. Stockings are considered a
superfluity while in the house, except by those influenced by the
customs of foreign lands.

If the lady wishes to make a call she dons a black silk or satin skirt
with a long train, and over it ties a piece of black goods shaped like a
large apron hanging down the back instead of the front. The lower end is
brought up over the head and tied under the chin, acting as hat and
shoulder covering, completely disguising the form. Over the face below
the eyes is tied a piece of white chiffon. This is really an addition to
the woman’s charming appearance, as the present-day Egyptian woman is
wearing the veil so thin that the shape of the features can be dimly
seen, softened and refined by the delicate chiffon, until even a plain
woman takes on an appearance of beauty that perhaps vanishes when the
veil is removed. She is allowed to show her chief attraction, her great
black eyes, which peer at one curiously over the folds of white. They
are not so large as are the Indian woman’s eyes, but they are very
expressive, shaded by long straight lashes, which are generally touched
up by kohl, since even with the advent of modernism the Egyptian woman
cannot be persuaded to relegate her kohl-pot to the lumber-room.

The woman of the labouring class, seen on the street, is dressed in a
long gown hanging straight from the shoulders, over which, when she
leaves her home, she drapes a large black shawl covering her from head
to feet. The veil of this class of woman is of black cloth, so thick
that it is impossible to distinguish the features beneath it, and often
weighted at the bottom with gold or silver coins. Covering the nose is
the disfiguring piece of wood which holds the veil in place. The picture
of this sombre-clad woman, with her ugly veil and grotesque nosepiece,
is taken by the average tourist as representing the Egyptian woman,
while, in fact, she represents only the lower class, such as the wife of
the labourer, the small artisan, or the petty merchant. These women may
be seen on the streets walking with the stately grace that is given to
the woman who carries a burden on the head, or five or six of them may
be seen sitting on a flat-bottomed cart drawn by a much decorated donkey
_en route_ to visit relatives or watch the festivities connected with a
marriage, or going to the cemeteries. This last seems to be a favourite
excuse for an outing with women of this class, as it gives them a chance
to have a good gossip on the way, and opportunity of strolling in the
open air, which must be a great boon to the poor in the large cities, as
their homes are small, dark, dirty, and most unsanitary. Yet as one
lives in the Orient and sees the conditions under which the great
majority of the population live, one grows to believe that there are no
such things as microbes, else all these people would have been dead long
ago.

[Illustration:

  THE TAILOR.

  To face p. 44.]

Even in modern Cairo one rarely sees a lady except as she passes in a
closed carriage or limousine. Women do not go to the mosques, as
Mohammed said that women in places of public worship distracted men from
the real business which brought them there. They are also never found in
restaurants, hotels, nor coffeehouses. In fact, an Egyptian woman never
goes to a place where she might be looked upon by men other than those
of her immediate family. Even the most modern product of the present
system of education would hardly dare to be seen in any place that was
not harim. At the bazaars held for charity and other public functions a
day is set apart when the women may visit them without danger of being
looked upon by men. An Egyptian woman told me that these men must be
educated and elevated before Egyptian women will dare to go freely upon
the street. Even a foreign woman dreads passing the outdoor cafés, where
the men turn noisily in their chairs and stare rudely at the woman who
has the courage to pass them. In the case of an Egyptian lady, I was
told that these men do not confine their rudeness to stares, but that
the low remarks made to her confirm the belief that the time is not yet
ripe for the Egyptian woman to try to enter the world, so long closed to
her.

These harim women are just beginning to learn the joys of shopping.
Formerly the husbands or fathers bought the goods for their dresses, or
the shopkeepers sent their assistants, who laid the gay stuffs and
jewels on mats within the courtyards, where the women could make their
choice. But now in some of the larger shops parties of veiled ladies may
be seen fingering the soft silks and satins, looking with curious eyes
at the hats, and selecting the jewels with which they love to adorn
themselves. Cairo is the happy hunting ground of the Parisian jeweller,
as Egyptian women are noted for their love of bracelets, ear-rings,
necklaces, and pins. The old-time heavy gold chains and hoops are losing
their charm, and now the lady whose husband has a purse easy to open
buys long pendant ear-rings set with many diamonds, bracelets of pearls
and rubies, rings of turquoise and sapphires, and necklaces of emeralds.
Quantity, not quality, she desires, and the colour and purity of a stone
are not so much to be desired as the size or number. The women who make
no claim to modernism are still seen in the goldsmiths’ shops in the
native streets, sitting in front of the tiny cupboard-like holes in the
wall, weighing, pricing, trying on the great barbaric hoops of gold for
the ears, or the chains with large hammered pendants, made in the same
form and with the same design as those worn by their mothers and their
grandmothers. The merchant does not need to originate new designs to
attract the conservative Egyptian woman who still clings to her native
jewelry. It has been the same shape and design from time immemorial.

Another product of the West has penetrated the harims of Cairo—the
French dressmakers. Many of the rich merchants’ wives and the wives of
the officials who cannot get their gowns direct from Paris, and who are
discarding the straight empire pattern for clothes more _à la mode_, get
their dresses fashioned by these clever French women, who come to the
women’s courtyards loaded down with fashion books, tape measures, and a
running stream of flattering talk, leaving with many orders written in
their little books. It must be admitted that the Egyptian woman looks
best when dressed in her native costume, which mercifully disguises the
over-abundant flesh with which most women who spend their lives within
the harims are blessed. Sweets, a sedentary life, and many sweetened
drinks conspire to make the lady of Egypt extremely fat, after the first
flush of youth is past. This is not a sorrow to her as it would be to
her Western sister, and when she has arrived at the age of thirty, and
the pounds that she feels should come with the advancing years have not
been added to her figure, she sends to the chemist for a mixture to
convert her into the present ideal of Egyptian beauty. This ideal in the
olden time, if we may judge of the pictures seen upon the walls of the
tombs and temples, was that of a slight, willowy figure. But that ideal
has changed. The woman now seems to strive to be as wide as she is long,
and because of this fact and also because stays are not looked upon with
joy by the Egyptian woman, who has always been allowed an uncompressed
figure, the modern dress is not adapted to her style of beauty.

Women are not prisoners in any sense of the word, nor are they pining
behind their latticed windows as we are sometimes led to believe by
writers of fiction. They visit freely amongst each other, and their
visits are not confined to the passing of a few senseless platitudes
that generally mark conversation of Western women making afternoon calls
upon each other. They do not “call,” they go for a visit of several
hours or even days.

When a lady enters the home of her friend, she takes off the veil and
the cape-like covering of her head, steps out of the long black skirt,
and stands arrayed like Solomon in all his glory. They dress as
elaborately for their women friends as if to meet admirers of the
opposite sex, and they spend hours drinking the delicious coffee,
sipping sherbets, eating fruits or confectionery, and chatting over the
gossip of the day. When time for serving the meal arrives, a large tray
is brought into the room and placed upon a low stand, around which the
women group themselves in comfortable attitudes on rugs. From these
trays they help themselves to the deliciously cooked mutton or chicken,
the vegetables and desserts with which it is laden. Pork is never
served, as it was forbidden by Mohammed. They eat with their fingers,
using only the right hand, as the left hand is ceremonially unclean, and
after the meal a servant pours water over their hands from a
long-spouted brass ewer, the water falling into a brass basin. Many of
the ladies smoke, but it is not a universal habit. If they indulge in
the habit with which we always associate the Eastern woman, it is by
using a large water pipe with an extraordinarily long, supple stem, the
smoke passing through perfumed water and becoming cool before reaching
the user’s lips.

The Eastern woman loves perfumes and prefers them much stronger than we
of the Western world think agreeable. A hostess will pass around the
little wooden scent-bottles, and each guest may add as much as she
wishes to her already over-perfumed body. The mixture is not always
pleasant to sensitive nostrils. Incense and sweet-smelling woods are
often burned in little braziers and add to the congeries of odours.

Many of the old-time Egyptian women cannot read; indeed, it is stated
that only three out of a thousand women could read ten years ago; their
conversation is therefore confined to the gossip of the neighbourhood:
who is married, who is engaged; the social and financial standing of the
families involved; the presents and the trousseaux. Society is divided
into cliques, as in any other part of the world, and there is a decided
“Who’s Who,” especially in Cairo and in the larger towns.

The woman’s life seems to centre around her children, since it is this
evidence of Allah’s blessing that makes her greatest happiness. A great
part of their talk is involved in the discussion of their children’s
ailments, the remedies, their children’s education and life in general.
There are no nurseries in Egypt, and both boys and girls live within the
harim until they are seven years old, when the boy, if he does not go to
school, has a tutor and lives in the selam-lik. When, as at present,
Government schools are established in every small town and village in
Egypt, both boys and girls go to school. The girl is kept strictly harim
even in the school, and the teachers are women, who guard carefully from
men’s eyes the girls who are entrusted to them for the day.

Besides visiting with their friends or relatives, the Egyptian women go
to weddings, where they look upon the dancing and hear the singing from
their places behind the screens, or they make pilgrimages to the tombs
of saints or holy men, where they pray for the health of their children;
or, if they have not been so fortunate as to have children, they pray
for that blessing. They do not pray _to_ the saints, as even Mohammed
himself cannot answer prayers, but they believe that the austere lives
passed by these holy men will intercede for them with the Great and One
God.

An Egyptian friend of mine, telling me of the efficacy of one of the
places of pilgrimage in the cure of eye troubles, said:—

“Yes, I believe in these charms obtained at the tomb of some of the
marabouts, and I have been on several pilgrimages, although it is not
much encouraged in our family. You saw my brother’s wife to-day. She has
visited the tomb of every saint in the vicinity of Cairo, but it is just
because she is restless and wants to get out. She cares no more about
the saints than you do, but it gives her an opportunity to get away from
my mother. My life, that you think so restricted, is wildly exciting to
what it was when I was a girl at home. Mother is most conservative, and
will not even allow a man-servant near the harim. Her cook has never
seen her, although he has been in the family since I was a baby. Here in
the country I have men-servants who see me unveiled, but they are the
descendants of slaves who were in the family of my husband for
generations, and that is permitted if we are not too orthodox.”

I noticed while visiting friends in the country with this progressive,
educated Egyptian woman that if we passed an ordinary fellah, or
workman, she did not take care to cover her face. If we met an overseer
or a man above the farmer class, she very carefully drew her veil across
her face, leaving only the eyes visible.

The women are very superstitious, and believe in the efficacy of charms
and amulets for every known disease. Nearly every woman wears around her
neck, lost to sight amidst the innumerable chains with which she covers
the upper part of her body, an amulet or charm of some kind. Perhaps it
is a silver box containing a few words of the Koran, or a small piece of
parchment with mystic letters written on it, guaranteed to guard her
household from harm. All Egyptian women know of charms and lotions and
shrines or mystic words to give the wife who has not presented a son
unto her lord. One of the first questions asked by Egyptian women is,
“How many children have you?” If the answer is “None!” they cannot keep
the looks of pity from their eyes, nor the sympathetic words of
condolence from their lips. They are also most generous in giving
talismans to remedy this defect, and will wax enthusiastic over the
beneficial effects of some favourite pilgrimage, amulet, or prayer.

I have a piece of sheepskin with the ninety-nine names of Allah written
upon it in gold, intended to insure, not only the advent of a son, but
also, if bound upon his arm, to guard him from all danger throughout his
lifetime.

At the opera in cosmopolitan Cairo one may hear rustlings and low
laughter from behind the closely screened boxes, and know that an
Egyptian Bey or wealthy merchant is there with his family, allowing them
to enjoy the play and watch the people in the house, themselves unseen.
But this joy is given usually only to the women of Cairo, as the smaller
towns have not as yet become sufficiently modernized that the women may
go to the public theatres. In the conservative homes, if a hostess
wishes to entertain her guests with professionals, she sends for the
singing girls or dancing women to come to her home, and there they
perform before the ladies, who watch them from the divans, and talk and
laugh with their entertainers, getting far more amusement from them than
by simply looking at them on the stage.

Fortune-tellers are often brought into the women’s quarters, and blind
men who chant the words of their sacred book, the Koran. This latter is
a popular form of entertainment, and even to Western ears the sad, minor
music has a charm, although after a time it becomes monotonous to one
who cannot understand the Arabic in which the Koran is written.

Even the conservative Egyptian mother is now beginning to see that she
must educate her daughter as well as her son, if she wishes her to make
a good marriage. The modern Egyptian youth does not care for an ignorant
wife who can only entertain him with household gossip when he comes from
office or shop.

There is ample opportunity given the Egyptian girl to obtain an
education, as the Government has established schools in every city,
town, and village. One sees also a great number of private schools for
girls, supervised by every imaginable type of mistress. The Italian,
Spanish, French, and English woman is taking advantage of this craving
on the part of young Egypt for education. Many of these schoolmistresses
are unfitted for their work, but as yet her pupils are not able to judge
of the quality of information they are so eagerly absorbing. The mission
schools, next to those provided by the Government, are perhaps the best
equipped with trained teachers from England and America. These latter
schools are filled with bright-faced young girls, who are taking the
newer ideas to their secluded mothers, who shake their heads dolefully
over the new spirit of independence so swiftly creeping into the lives
of their children, and which they fear, but to which they must accede.

Egypt, in common with the entire world, is experiencing vital changes,
and her younger women, although walled in by custom, tradition, and
habit, are eager to get into step with their advancing sons and
husbands. It is only the older woman who is the implacable foe of
progress, as she fears a change may mean the destruction of her little
world. Yet she is fast losing the power as well as the wish to resist
it, and the number of schools for girls shows that a real awakening to
Egypt’s greatest need is being felt and met. At first the mother feared
her daughter would be led astray from the true Faith, but the English
Government bore this well in mind when establishing the educational
system. The Koran and the practical observances of its tenets are taught
by faithful followers of the prophet in the schools, and this has
induced mothers to look with complacent eyes upon the new learning.

Infinitely better daughters and prospective mothers come each year from
the Government and mission schools, if for no other reason than that
they are intelligently trained in domestic economy and in the laws of
hygiene. The frightful waste of infant life which heretofore has been
caused by the ignorance of mothers will stop. The present training of
the young girl strikes directly at this huge infant mortality and in the
coming mother, educated and equipped for her duties, lies the hope of
Egypt.




                              CHAPTER III
                      MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, POLYGAMY


                     SOCIAL LIFE OF EGYPTIAN WOMEN

The Koran enjoins marriage on all and calls bachelors the worst of
mankind. Consequently there are few spinsters or bachelors in any Moslem
land, and a woman who is divorced or widowed must have another husband
found for her as soon as possible.

Although Mohammed believed that all men should be married, there were
four classes of women against whom he warned his fellows:—

A _Yearner_—that is, a woman who has children by a former husband and
wishes to get everything possible for them from her present husband.

A _Deplorer_.—One who is constantly deploring the loss of her first
husband and stating his virtues to the disparagement of the present
incumbent.

A _Backbiter_.—One who is kind to her husband’s face and behind his back
accuses him of cruelty, miserliness, and ill-treatment.

A _Toadstool_.—A beauty who is lazy and tyrannical and uses all the
substance of her husband to buy silks, jewels, and perfumes with which
to adorn herself.

There is no courtship as we know it. The marriage is made by the parents
or by a “go-between,” and the parties most interested do not see each
other until the night of the marriage, although they may have exchanged
photographs and have heard eulogistic descriptions of each other. But
there are no shy meetings, no gazing into the eyes of the loved one. A
girl would be considered as lacking in modesty and maidenly reserve if
it were known that she attempted to see the man to whom she will be
compelled to owe all allegiance and who will practically own her, body
and soul, as soon as she is his wife.

During the time before the marriage the bridegroom, if a man of wealth,
sends his bride-to-be many costly presents, generally in the shape of
jewelry, silks, fans, slippers, and boxes of sweets. Her gifts to him
are cigarette cases, embroidered sleeping suits, a rich fez, or some
other practical evidence of her affection.

In families of any social pretensions whatsoever, there is drawn a
marriage contract which stipulates the amount of dowry and whatever
business relationships are entered into by the husband and wife. If the
amount of dowry is not expressly stated in the contract, the woman is
entitled to the customary dower of a woman of her class, which is judged
according to that received by the other female members of her family.
This contract can also contain a stipulation that the husband may not
marry another wife so long as the present wife is living with him, and
it also often states that the wife may divorce her husband for certain
expressly stated causes.

There are two kinds of dower, one called “prompt” which is all paid at
the time of the marriage, the other where only part is given at that
time and the rest retained to be paid in case of divorce or on the death
of the husband. In the latter case the dower must be paid before the
other debts of the estate are settled. The wife has absolute rights over
her dower and can refuse to go to her husband’s home until it is paid.

The trousseau is provided by the father of the bride, and the articles
she takes to her new home in the shape of furniture, jewelry, etc., are
her property and can be taken with her if she should return to her
father’s home or if she should be left a widow. The bridegroom is
supposed to help pay the expenses of the elaborate feasting which lasts
from three to seven days, and which is often a great drain upon the
resources of both families. Custom has commanded that no parsimony shall
be shown at this time of rejoicing, and each family tries to outdo its
neighbour in the form of entertainment offered to its guests.

Theatrical entertainments are held in the courtyards, or in the large
guest-room. Dancing girls dance and jugglers perform, while food is most
plentifully provided, but there is no drinking of intoxicating liquors
in the home of a follower of Mohammed. In the place of wines, sherbets,
fruit juices, and coffee are served.

The culmination of the festivities comes when the bride in a gaily
decorated carriage is conducted to her new home. In the streets of any
large city one often sees these processions, the band leading the march,
dozens of singers preceding the carriage, and friends following, all
trying to show their joy in the happy event.

According to Western ideals there is one great bar to the lasting
happiness of the Moslem woman, and that is the question of divorce. It
is said that 90 per cent. of the marriages in Egypt end in divorce, and
that two people who live to an old age together without one of them
being divorced are rarely found. Mohammed has been severely censured
because of this great blot upon the progressive laws he made for his
people, but before his time there was no check on divorce; a man could
divorce often and for no reason, and a woman was helpless. This wise man
laid down laws far in advance of his time on this subject, and (what was
then an unheard of thing) allowed a woman to divorce her husband for
explicitly stated causes.

If they divorce for mutual incompatibility—that is, if they both agree
to it—there need be no question of the courts; but if the wife wishes to
be free and the husband will not permit it, the woman may go before a
judge and state her case, and if her charges are proven she will be
granted her petition. Often a woman will return her dower or agree to
forfeit the part not yet paid, or in many cases make a money payment to
the avaricious husband in return for her liberty. A case not long ago
came before the judge where the husband treated his wife brutally in
order to force from her a certain sum of money in exchange for her
freedom. The woman paid the sum demanded, then took the case before the
judge, and proved that his cruel treatment would entitle her to a
divorce, and the courts compelled the man to return the money to his
ex-wife with an added gift.

The different sects have different modes of procedure. One requires the
husband to pronounce the words of divorce once in a single sentence and
not live with his wife for three months, when the divorce is
accomplished. Another form requires that the words be pronounced three
times in succession at the interval of a month, the divorce becoming
effective when the last formula is pronounced. Another formula allows
the husband to say three times in succession, “I divorce thee! I divorce
thee! I divorce thee!” and the legal separation takes place.

A woman may say to her husband, “Give me a divorce in exchange for my
dower,” and if the man will say, “I do,” a lawful dissolution of the
marriage is effected.

Whatever the rule, divorce is very easy for the Moslem husband, and the
woman lives in constant fear that she will hear the words “I am
discharged from the marriage between you and me,” and will be compelled
to return to her home. This insecurity of the marriage bond causes the
woman to hoard what money she may obtain, and takes away the interest
she might otherwise have in the affairs of her husband, fearing that
prosperity may only mean that he will yearn for a younger and more
beautiful woman to share with him his riches. It also makes her try in
every way to preserve her beauty, buying cosmetics and talismans that
clever merchants assure her will aid in retaining the love of her
husband.

In the event of divorce the woman is commanded to remain single three
months, but the man may marry immediately. There is no especial disgrace
attached to divorce, yet the woman’s value is lowered to a certain
extent, and quite likely she will not be able to make so good a marriage
again.

No child under two years may be taken away from the mother, as the Koran
commands her to suckle the infant for that period. Unless it is proved
that she is totally unworthy to bring up her child, or unless she
marries an unbeliever, the boy is entitled to live with his mother until
he is seven years old, and the girl until she is nine, when the father
takes the guardianship of them both. Often they are allowed to live on
indefinitely with the mother, especially the girl, if the father marries
again and the new wife does not wish the care of the children of her
predecessor. This makes the burden of divorce fall heavily upon the
innocent children, as the mother generally marries and her husband may
not care for the children of another man; consequently they are left in
the care of the mother’s parents or other relatives, who quite likely
consider them a superfluous addition to an already overcrowded
household, although the father is compelled to contribute towards their
support.

If divorce is prevalent in the Land of the Nile, that other great
domestic evil, polygamy, is slowly dying out, mainly for an economic
reason. All the wives in a family are supposed to have equal support,
and in these days, when the women of Egypt are beginning to know and
crave the luxuries of life, it is hard for a man, unless of the very
wealthy class, to provide for more than one family. In a rich household
each wife would demand, not only her own suite of rooms, but quite
likely her own house and staff of servants, and she would see that her
husband did not show favouritism in regard to clothes, jewelry, or
amusements towards the women and children in his harim. Often in poorer
homes one sees two wives living in peace together, but the man with more
than one wife is becoming rarer each year. It is said that not one man
in fifty has more than one wife. The cynics say that it is because
divorce is so much easier and cheaper, but we believe that it is because
of the higher ideals that are coming to the Egyptian along with the
education that he is receiving from the Western world.

It is easy for the Western mind to take exaggerated views of the
unhappiness of the life in the harim. I found, among the better classes,
with whom I came into contact more than I did with the very poor, the
same average of happiness that prevails in any land. Seclusion which
seems so dreadful in our eyes has grown to be a matter of caste, and the
older women, at least, have no desire to depart from it. The power of
the husband is greater than it is in foreign lands, but he is generally
a kindly man who leaves the women’s department strictly alone, to be
ordered as his wife desires. It is she who has charge of the children
while in infancy, teaching them or having them taught the Koran, taking
them with her on visits to friends, and being with them much more than
does the average Western mother of the same class. A middle-class
Egyptian woman does practically the same things as does the wife of a
middle-class Englishman. She cooks, washes, mends the clothing, keeps
the house, and sews her children’s dresses. If she is able to have
servants—and one is very poor in Egypt not to be able to afford at least
one servant—the work of the household is superintended directly by the
mistress. Of course she may not go to the market nor to the shops, but
she inspects the food when brought to the house by the vendor or the
cook.

The care of the clothing is a great task if there are many sons in the
family who dress in the native costume, which is made of light-coloured
silk; the long black cloak is prone to sweep up the dust of the streets.
The children of the poor wear only a short shirt until they are about
six years old, but the children of the rich don European dress, either
made in the house or bought in the shops. The ready-made clothing has
found its way to the harims and saves the mother much work, as the
sewing-machine is not so well known there as it is in the homes of the
West.

Although the Egyptian woman is not seen in the mosques, she is very
religious, and more zealous in the faith than is her husband, who has a
chance to broaden his religious views by coming in contact with people
of other beliefs. The wife does not observe the prayers as strictly as
does her husband, but she has been taught her Koran in childhood and
follows its precepts to the best of her ability.

The woman, like women all over the world, is much more rigidly ruled by
her superstitious beliefs than is the man. She attributes the
extraordinary phenomena of Nature to the work of good or evil spirits
and believes in placating them or controlling them as far as possible.
These evil spirits are liable to lurk in all places, in the ovens, the
wells, and even in the market basket, which is covered to protect it
from the evil eye of covetous passers-by, or to guard it from a
wandering spirit who may be seeking a place of retreat.

[Illustration:

  A WOMAN OF THE MASSES.

  To face p. 64.]

The women in general are very ignorant in regard to all sanitary laws,
and there is an enormous amount of preventable sickness within the
harims. Children are allowed to eat what and whenever they wish, and
sweets are indulged in at all times. All babies suffer from eye trouble,
mainly caused by uncleanliness. A baby is not washed for eight days
after birth, then if the father or mother is suffering from any form of
skin disease, it is considered fatal to put water on the child. Flies
and mosquitoes abound, carrying contagion to all. Doctors are unknown
amongst the poorer class, and the mothers are in the hands of unskilled
midwives at the time of child-bearing, and the mortality is great.

When the angel of death enters the household of an Egyptian, it may be
known by the wailing of the women. The custom of weeping and wailing,
beating of the breasts, and tearing out of the hair still prevails on
the death of the member of a family. The body is buried within
twenty-four hours. It is enclosed in a coffin which is covered by a rich
shawl or piece of embroidery and carried to the cemetery on the
shoulders of men, preceded by blind men chanting the Koran and followed
by friends and relatives. The same ceremony is observed for the women as
for the men.

The soul is supposed not to leave the body for three days. The first
night an angel whispers in the ear of the deceased, “What is your
faith?” and the soul must answer, “I am a Moslem.” The angel again
whispers, “In whom do you believe?” and the soul will answer, “I believe
in the One God,” and the third question is, “And who is your prophet?”
and the answer, “Mohammed is the Prophet of God,” allows the soul to be
left in peace.

Three days, seven days, and forty days after death memorials are held at
the home of the late deceased, when friends call and offer their
sympathy, and food and money are distributed in great quantities to the
beggars. At times of festivity or mourning the poor come in crowds, and
are never turned away empty-handed. There are practically no almshouses
in Egypt, nor any organized charity, but Mohammedans are commanded to
give one-twentieth of their income to the poor. Whether they follow this
law exactly or not, they are very generous to those in need, not giving
with much discernment, but always willing to drop a coin into the
outstretched hand or to fill the empty bowl.

One cannot judge of the life of the average Egyptian woman by living
only in Cairo, where the note of modernism has sounded with such call as
to reach even the inner rooms of the harim, but in the smaller towns of
Egypt one sees the real Egyptian life, untouched by the customs of alien
lands.

[Illustration:

  CHILDREN ON THE NILE.

  To face p. 66.]

I visited in a home on the banks of the Nile and watched with interested
eyes the life around me: saw the mother attend to her household duties
in the morning, giving the servants directions for the day’s work,
measuring and weighing out the stores to the cook, and taking his
accounts as he came from the market-place with the day’s provisions. An
old blind woman came in the morning to give the children their lesson in
the Koran. She would start a surah, then the children would repeat the
remaining verses in a sing-song voice, the slightest break in the
intonation calling forth a rebuke from the leader, whose nodding head
kept time to the chant. At nine o’clock the older children took their
books under their arms and started for the village school, in the same
noisy manner as do our children at home. I watched the fellaheen as they
lifted the water from the river to irrigate the thirsty fields, and saw
the black-robed women filling their water-jars and placing them upon
their heads with a beautiful sweeping gesture, walk gracefully away to
their little mud huts that could scarcely be distinguished from the
sands around them.

Trains of camels passed our wall on their way to the distant city, and
the shepherd boys drove their flocks of sheep and goats in search of
pasture. I remembered Browning’s beautiful David, who sang:—

    And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as one after one
    So docile they come to the pen door till folding is done.
    They are white and untorn by bushes, for lo, they have fed
    Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream’s bed.
    And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star
    Into eve and the blue far above us—so blue and so far.

We watched the little boys ride the great unwieldy water buffaloes to
the water side, slipping off their backs to allow them, groaning with
content, to wallow in the sluggish waters, and when the hard white stars
came out in the sapphire sky, we looked far over the Libyan hills, which
had changed from the gold and opal of sunset to the grey blue that
heralds the coming of the Egyptian night. The evening breeze that always
comes with the setting of the sun brought the smell of the desert to us,
and the deep swish of the Nile came as an accompaniment to the cry of
the muezzin from the tiny mosque in the distance, and we saw its
response in the fellah kneeling beside his waiting camel, lifting his
hands to the heavens, as the clear, bell-like voice came over the
evening air:—

         There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His Prophet.

[Illustration:

  BEDOUIN WOMEN IN FRONT OF TENT.

  To face p. 69.]




                               CHAPTER IV
                        THE WOMAN OF THE DESERT


“Behold the townsman,” cried one of the Bedouins, “they have for the
desert but a single word, while we have a legion.”

The desert, which in many eyes is a wilderness of desolation, has for
the dweller beneath the tents another aspect. It is the desert which he
loves, where he was born, under the brown tents of his tribe where he
hopes to pass his life, and in the sands where he wishes to be buried.
He loves each one of its many phases, from the sand burnt to powder by
the white fire of the noonday sun, to the cool breeze of the dying day,
that causes the smoke from the many fires to rise in blue-grey wreaths
to the evening sky, which changes from violet to greyer blue, and then
to the intense dark blue of the precious sapphire.

The Bedouin, to whatever tribe he may belong, sitting astride his camel,
padding softly through the desert sands, sees before him the low black
tents of a desert village, and knows that he may descend and find a
welcome. The host will say to him, “Every stranger is an invited guest,
and the guest while in the tent is the lord thereof.” He may sit before
the large round bowl of mutton and eat his fill, and when the stars have
come out, and seem so near that he may put up his hand and pluck them
from their field of blue, he will be conducted to the guest-tent or to
the tent of the headman, and, wrapping himself more tightly in his long
cloak, he will lie down secure, knowing that his life is safe so long as
he remains a guest of the tribe, having eaten of their salt and drank
their water.

These Arabs of the desert are proud with a pride we do not understand.
They are proud of their long lineage, of the purity of their blood, of
their unbroken traditions. They are an impulsive, restless people, who,
with their emotional temperament, give impetuosity to everything which
they touch. They are the real adventurers of the world, and their
nervous, high-strung, daring characteristics have become so absorbed
into their very being as to have become permanent marks of their race.
At the seat of all troubles, in countries where the Bedouins are strong,
one finds them ready to do and dare anything that appeals to their
imagination. At the rising of a Mahdi, it is the Arab of the desert who
is his strongest support, who will die for him, who will sweep down like
a holocaust upon the people who do not share with him his beliefs in the
cause, for which he throws his life away with a bravado that makes men
of a more sluggish blood gasp in astonishment. This cause must appeal to
his emotions—those same riotous emotions which never produce, but always
ruin. We are told that the Bedouin is the author of complete desolation,
and that destruction follows in his pathway; that his effects are always
sinister, and that this race brings ruin to any land where they have
been permitted to have full sway. We know he is not a creature of habit,
and that routine, a settled existence, a fixed round of duties, are
things which he does not understand nor practise. He does not reason and
is not practical, yet it is the Arab that has succeeded in sending the
faith of El Islam around the world, and every movement of revival comes
directly from the desert.

Few people travelling in Egypt or Algeria see the real dweller beneath
the tents. There are Bedouins in the cities, and one soon learns to tell
them, with their keen eyes, their eager faces, and majestic stride, from
the more placid, self-satisfied Egyptian. But in the city he is not his
true self, as life in the cities has a permanent and degrading effect on
the character and physique of the race; the fire of the desert dies
within him. It is in the shifting sands beneath the tents that he is at
his best. There he carries out his tribal customs, and there he
practises that wonderful virtue of hospitality that Mohammed, himself an
Arab, laid upon his people. He said, “Whoever believes in God and the
Resurrection must respect his guest; and the time of his being kind to
him is one day and night; and the period of entertaining him is three
days; and after that if he does it longer, it benefits him more, but it
is not right for a guest to stay in the house of a host so long as to
incommode him.” It is said that even a deadly enemy may come to the tent
and demand water and salt, and it will be given him, and he will be
allowed to rest for the night. In the morning he will be sent on his
way, and his life is safe until he has passed the boundary of the
tribe’s dominions, then his enemy is entitled to follow him and kill him
if he can.

All tourists passing through Egypt look forward to a few days passed in
the desert. The guide paints in glowing colours the wonders of the
sands, the colours of the evening sky, the sounds of the hobbled camels
as they wait for the morrow’s march, and the traveller from the West
decides to see for once the life of which he had read and dreamed so
many years. In every soul is a cry for romance, a desire to leave the
prosaic everyday life which he knows too well, and explore the mysteries
of the unknown, hoping that there by chance he will find food to feed
his hungry imagination. A trip to the desert does this for many people.
There the broker or the banker, with the wife he has looked upon for
many years, sit in front of their hired tent, and watch the camel man,
as with scolding voice he prepares the growling, surly camels for the
night. When all is quiet but the distant barking of the dogs, they sit
in front of the evening fire and watch the stars come out in the sky
that seems a great inverted cup of blue above them. The camel drivers,
dragomen, and guards sprawl in easy attitudes and chant mournful, weird
songs that have come to them from the Persian mystics of olden time.
These people from New York or London do not realize that they are not
seeing the real desert nor the people of the desert. The setting is all
staged most carefully by the wily dragoman, who imports his Bedouins
from the neighbouring villages, who dresses tents until they would cause
the man who calls them home to stare in blank amazement at their tawdry
hangings. The only thing he cannot import is the wonderful dessert
sands, the sky, the cooling breezes that always come when the sun has
set. These are free for all, to the ragged camel driver as well as to
the man who scatters so freely the English gold.

We had the pleasure of knowing the chief of a large tribe of Bedouins,
and from his castle on the edge of the desert were permitted to make
many visits to these picturesque people. Our first glimpse of the true
man of the desert was obtained from the visitors in the guest-house,
where any Bedouin could stop from one to three days as the guest of the
chief, and every day about sundown strange white-robed men with guns
strapped across their back rode up on horses and dismounted at the gate,
craving the hospitality of the chief. There were always from ten to
thirty guests within the rest-house, men looking like the Senouisses,
who cause so much trouble for the unbelievers of foreign lands. We were
told that many of them were going to join their brothers in Tripoli to
fight against the hated unbeliever. They were not permitted by the
Government to go openly, as Egypt was supposed to be neutral, so they
took the long caravan journey of thirty days across the desert to aid in
what they considered an unjust war against the true faith.

Within the harim of my hostess were rooms set aside for travelling
Bedouin women, but they were seldom occupied, as the women of the tents
are not wanderers like their husbands, unless the whole tribe moves. My
hostess was a young, educated girl, to whom the confines of a Bedouin
harim must have been very wearying. The laws concerning the women of the
tribe were very strict, one being that a woman must stay within her
apartment until the birth of her first child. My friend was not blessed
with children, but had been compelled to conform to the usages of her
husband’s family, in part at least, by remaining within her home for a
year. Now she went about freely among the villages of the Bedouins near
the castle, only taking the precaution of being veiled. These Bedouin
women were quite another type from those seen in the cities. They had
magnificent physiques, tall and supple, and carried themselves with a
stately grace. They were dressed in long, straight, cotton gowns of blue
or black, and a many-coloured sash was wrapped around the waist. The
only foot covering was the anklets of silver that fell down over the
instep; and they wore over their hair, which was braided in many braids,
and in which was plaited small gold coins that clinked as they moved
their heads, a veil of black with a coloured border, or of dark red with
a yellow border. This veil adds to the dignity and beauty of a woman in
a most charming manner. At the time of feasting or of gaiety the plain
veil is changed for one sewed with bright-coloured beads or sequins.

From the lower lip to the neck, and lost in the covering of the dress,
are three dark blue lines of tattooing. This is seen now only on the
older women, and is being thrown on the altar of modernity by the
daughters of the Bedouins who have peeped into the world and are trying
to be like their more sophisticated Egyptian neighbours. The hair is
straight and black, and with many has been given a tinge of red by
washing it in henna. I saw no grey-haired women; because those who have
been touched by the finger of time, kindly custom has allowed to dye
their locks, and there were many flaming heads above wrinkled faces.
While a guest with the Bedouins, they were quite determined to give me
the touch of red that to them is so beautiful. They say it keeps the
hair cool and prevents it from falling out, protecting it from the
burning sun. I resisted, although I watched the process, which was most
interesting. The henna powder is mixed with water until the consistency
of a paste, and then the head is covered and left for the night, when in
the morning it is washed, and if not applied too thickly there is just a
glint in the dark locks. Henna is also applied to the nails of the
fingers and toes, and with many it practically covers the fingers to the
first joint, making the hands look most uncleanly to European eyes. The
inside of the feet and the palms are not forgotten by the Bedouin or the
Egyptian woman who has conserved the customs of her mother, but the
henna-dyed hands are rarely seen now by the newer generation, who have
relegated the henna-pot to the lumber-room along with the tattooing-ink.
A great mass of jewellery was worn, not the diamonds and rubies found in
the French shops of Cairo, but the true ornaments of a barbaric people.
Great hoops of gold were in the ears, one from the top of the ear,
another hanging from the lobe. The neck, even to the waistline, was
covered with chains formed of balls of gold or of coins, and on the arms
were bracelets. In writing coldly of the Bedouin woman, her tattooing,
her henna-coloured hair, her kohl-blackened eyes, and her massive chains
of gold and anklets of silver, it seems as if she were living in an age
of barbarism, yet it is becoming to her rich colouring, and she is not
overdressed. They all belong to the time and place, and are made for
these women, who need strong settings for their savage beauty.

The women of the desert are much more free to come and go than are the
women of the cities, and it is only when they come in close proximity to
an Egyptian village that the Bedouin expects his wife to be secluded.
They do not mix with members of the other sex as do the women of the
West, because that is contrary to the instincts of all Eastern women,
but naturally they cannot be confined so strictly within the tents as
can the women who live in houses. In each tent is a division or curtain,
behind which the women retire when men approach, but they may be seen
sitting in front of their doorways, and passing to and fro in the
villages without veiling their faces. They pass their spare time when
not occupied in the household duties in weaving gaily coloured blankets,
striped red and yellow and black. These constitute the woman’s fortune.
My friend took me to one tent in which there were forty of these
blankets piled around the edge of the tent, and she said, “Five or six
of these in the possession of a woman and she is considered rich in this
world’s goods. This woman is a multi-millionaire.” She was an old woman
who seemed to be the leader of her village. It was she who met us and
conducted us to the guest-tent, which was at least twenty by thirty feet
in circumference, and which was hung with these beautiful hand-woven
blankets. The sands were covered with rugs on which we sat, and on which
the large round tray was placed for the meal which the kindly hospitable
women insisted that we should eat with them. There are no tables, beds,
nor chairs. The Bedouin says that we can never understand the desert
until we get close to her, rest our feet on her sands, and our head on
her bosom—

                But man is earth’s uncomfortable guest
                Until she takes him on her lap to rest.

One thinks of a tent in the desert under the pitiless sun as a most
uncomfortable place of retreat, but I found it quite the opposite, as
the strong wind, that seems to be always trying to temper the actions of
its enemy, blew over the desert and entered the open flaps, and crept
under the turned-up edges of the tent, fanning into flame the fire of
sweet-smelling woods that had been kindled in the tiny brass jar. Water
was hanging in porous bottles and in sheepskins in the draught, and when
mixed with the perfumed syrups was cool and refreshing. Coffee with a
touch of ambergris in the cup was served, and melons were given us in
great cool slices. These latter are a favourite fruit of the desert
people, I presume because of the vast amount of water of which they are
composed, and water is the luxury of all luxuries to those who dwell
among the sands. An old Arabian poet said: “There are seven things when
collected together in a drinking-room, it is not reasonable to stay
away. A melon, honey, roast meat, a young girl, wax lights, a singer,
and wine.” Twice during our visit was perfume sprinkled over us, and the
brass brazier was often replenished with sandalwood, a small packet of
the latter being given us as we were leaving. The Arabs, in fact all
Eastern people, love perfumes, and they use them in far greater quantity
and of stronger essence than we consider delicate. Musk and a heavy
perfume distilled from jasmine and roses seems to be a favourite.
Mohammed himself loved perfumes, and speaks of them in his promises to
the faithful who shall fall in battle: “And the wounds of him who shall
fall in battle shall on the day of judgment be resplendent with
vermilion and odorous as musk.” We visited the smaller tents, and in
some it was impossible to stand erect even at the ridge pole. In one was
a young baby wrapped in white cloth and twined with yards and yards of
camel’s-hair rope, only his tiny head and feet protruding to show that
there was a real baby in the bundle. He was bound practically the same
as are the babies of our North American Indian. I took him in my arms,
and he stared at me with great black eyes, and then he laughed and
cooed, much to the delight of the young father, who stood proudly by.
The mother was quite a young girl, not more than fifteen years old, I
should judge, and in her shyness she retired into the security of the
tent, resisting all my friendly overtures to have her picture taken with
the baby in her arms. Children abounded; there will be no race
extinction of the Bedouins so long as they remain in their deserts.
Their little brown bodies snuggled up to us, and their black eyes
twinkled saucily as they shyly held out their hands for the gifts which
evidently my friend always brought with her. They were a much better
type of children than are those in Egyptian villages—strong, pretty
bodies, and without the unhealthy eyes that are seen so much on the
young in Egypt.

In every tent was hung a gun, as robbers are frequent visitors, and each
dweller in the tent must protect his own. He keeps a fierce and noisy
dog that sees a stranger far across the sands, and one is followed far
beyond village confines by these canine police.

Polygamy is practised by the Bedouin more than it is by his city
brothers. I visited in the tent of a woman who was the second wife of
her husband, the other wife living in a tent adjoining. She had two
children, and the first wife one, and from what I heard there was not
the most pleasant relationship between them. Divorce is also one of the
evils, and these primitive men take advantage of it to an alarming
degree. Nearly every one I met had been divorced some time or other. It
was such a common occurrence that it produced no feeling of shame in the
woman who had been divorced.

The Bedouins are so proud of their lineage that they wish to keep the
tribal blood pure, and it leads to intermarriage. Cousins are frequently
married, and often a whole tribe is related in some manner. I was told
that the Bedouin settled an argument with a scolding or recalcitrant
wife by giving her a good chastising with a stick. While in Cairo I met
a most charming Bedouin who had left the sands for the gaieties of the
city. He was quite the polished gentleman to be found in any city, and I
was surprised when told that he had divorced his Bedouin wife because
she was not as progressive as his cosmopolitanism now required, and my
gossipy friend informed me, “They used to quarrel dreadfully and he
would beat her most frightfully.” I saw the lady in question, who had
returned to the tribe and remarried, and I rather admired the hardihood
of the somewhat effeminate man who would dare to try to beat this great
stalwart Bedouin woman, who looked as if she would take an active part
in any chastening that might be passing around her tent.

There is no such word as “privacy” in the Bedouin vocabulary; their
private life must be an open book to all the tribe. Their one great
blessing is the wonderfully clear, dry air, which gives them health and
vigour and makes them immune to many of the diseases that afflict their
Egyptian neighbour. But if they leave the desert and go to live within
the cities, they fall easy victims to the great white plague,
tuberculosis.

The Bedouins are followers of Mohammed, but they put their faith in holy
tombs and charms and sacred groves. They are not so strict in regard to
prayers as are the people who live within call of the muezzin, and the
religion of the women seems to be more superstition than worship of a
God. They placate a God who may do them harm, and they have innumerable
charms and amulets for the guarding of their children. In the desert
whirlwinds they see sweeping across their sands are “ginns” and evil
monsters; and at night, when a star shoots across the dark blue sky,
they believe it is a dart thrown by God at an evil genie, and they
whisper, “May God transfix the enemy of the faith.” Around the naked
children’s neck is hung a small box containing some quotation from the
Koran that will guard them from the evil eye, that curse most dreaded by
all mothers of an Eastern land. For every evil that man is heir to, the
Koran is the cure. A few words from its precious pages are bound upon
the arm of the camel driver, who feels that with this as guardian he
will not be lost upon the trackless sands. When ill, the wife will call
the astrologer, who writes a few words upon a piece of paper, and
soaking it in water, gives it to the wailing child, and the mother is
assured that all will soon be well, because has he not drunk of the very
fount of wisdom, the words that came from God?

The old custom of a life for a life prevails in the desert, and feuds
are handed down from father to son. If a father or brother is killed, it
is the duty of the son or brother to take the life of the enemy of his
house. In the olden time there was blood money which could be paid,
although it was considered a cowardly thing to accept it. A man’s life
was worth a hundred camels, a woman’s only fifty, but the man of honour
asked the life. The chief of the tribe has the power to decide in all
cases between his people, and the English Government does not materially
interfere in the life of the Bedouin.

In regard to the custom of taking a life for a life, there is a story
told of how in the early days the missions made a convert from
Mohammedanism, the only convert made among these tribes. In a blood feud
a man stabbed his enemy, but not fatally, and fleeing to the tent of a
friend he lingered there many days. This tent was one visited by the
missionary of the Christian faith, and while lying on his bed of pain
the wounded man heard of a faith that said, “Love your enemies,” and
before his death he sent word to his tribe that they must forget his
death and not try to avenge it. He even sent word that he forgave his
enemy. This was so astonishing that neither could the man who killed him
nor his tribe believe the fact, and secretly the enemy decided to find
for himself what had caused the unheard of message to be brought to his
tent. He learned of the new religion that said, “Revenge is Mine, saith
the Lord,” and he became the only Bedouin convert to the Christian
faith.

Living in this home on the edge of the desert we saw the real life of
the tent people. We watched them as, weary and tired looking, they
returned from their long journeys. We saw the trains of laden camels as
they started for the distant cities. We saw the shepherd boys drive in
the flocks of sheep or goats, looking as they did in olden Bible times.




                               CHAPTER V
                           INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE


There is no woman in the world who is so bound down by custom, so tied
to the wheel of conventionality, as is the Indian woman, both Hindu and
Mohammedan. In the olden times the ancient law-makers realized the
danger menacing a people surrounded by an inferior race, as were the
natives of India compared to their Aryan invaders, and instituted that
remarkable social system that peculiarly affects the women of the
country, and is the cause of many of the evils that has made her life
one not to be envied—caste.

Hindu society is divided into hundreds of communities consisting of
several clans, each clan having its own peculiar customs and iron-bound
rules. The clans are composed of families, governed by the family
custom, which in turn must obey the clan custom, and these must be
governed by the rules of the community. If a person violates the custom,
he forfeits all the privileges which he or his family may have in the
life of the community. His social life is entirely cut off from other
families and from the protection of his people. No one of his community
will eat or drink with him, visit his house, or marry his children. The
priest will not serve him, the barber will not shave him, nor the
washman wash for him. He will be absolutely alone and friendless in the
world, not able to get employment, even allowed to starve by the members
of his own family, who dare not help him, knowing they themselves would
be outcasted. He may not have the solace of joining another caste,
either lower or higher, because he must live and die in the caste in
which he was born.

Originally there were only four great castes in India: the Brahmans, or
priestly class, who held all the intellectual or cultural prerogatives;
the Kashatriyas, or warrior caste; the Vaisayas, or merchant caste; and
the Sudras, or working class. Below that still are the outcastes, who
are almost slaves, and do the lowest menial services. Manu, the great
law-maker, said that the Brahman issued from the head of Brahma, hence
his intellectual superiority; the warrior from his arms, the husbandman
from his thighs, and the Sudras from his feet, thus exactly placing the
man’s social position in life.

The laws of caste as explained by Mr. Dutt, a Hindu writer, are as
follows—

Individuals cannot be married who do not belong to the same caste.

A man may not eat with another not of his own caste.

His meals must be cooked by persons either of his own caste or by
Brahmans.

No man of an inferior caste is to touch his food or the dishes in which
they are served, or even to enter his cook-room.

No water or other liquid contaminated by the touch of a person of
inferior caste can be made use of—rivers, tanks, and other large sheets
of water being held incapable of defilement.

Articles of dry food, such as rice, wheat, etc., do not become impure by
passing through the hands of a person of inferior caste so long as they
remain dry, but cannot be taken if they become wet or greased.

Certain prohibited articles, such as cow’s flesh, pork, fowls, etc., are
not to be eaten.

The ocean and other boundaries of India must not be crossed.

These rules would not be so oppressive if there were only the four
original great castes into which society was first divided, but now each
class is divided into thousands of subdivisions, whose members may not
intermarry, nor eat together, nor even touch the food prepared by those
of another community. Mr. Sidney Low has very well expressed the
difficulties caused by this very intricate social ruling in his “Vision
of India”—

“To get a loose analogy, we might suppose that everybody who could claim
descent from one of the old Norman families in England formed one caste;
that members of the ‘learned professions,’ who had never soiled
themselves with commerce, were combined in a second; and that others
consisted exclusively of bankers or moneylenders, or of pork butchers,
costermongers, bricklayers, and so on _ad infinitum_.

“Add that a man born in the costermonger class would remain, or ought to
remain, a member of that connection to the end of his days, and that he
would bring up his sons to the same business; that a greengrocer ought
not to eat food in company with a poulterer, that a baker might not give
his daughter in marriage to a cheesemonger, and that neither could have
any matrimonial relations with a bootmaker; and, further, that none of
these persons could place himself in personal contact with a clergyman
or a solicitor—imagine all this, and you begin to acquire some faint
notion of the involved tangle in which the entire Hindu community has
managed to get itself enwound.”

Mr. Low quotes from the census report of Sir H. Risley further to
illustrate what the caste system means in the matrimonial sphere, that
sphere that especially touches the womanhood of India—

“He imagines the great tribe of the Smiths throughout Great Britain
bound together in a community, and recognizing as their cardinal
doctrine that a Smith must always marry a Smith, and could by no
possibility marry a Brown, a Jones, or a Robinson. This seems fairly
simple; there would be quite enough Miss Smiths to go round. But, then,
note that the Smith horde would be broken up into smaller clans, each
fiercely endogamous. Brewing Smiths,” Sir H. Risley asks us to observe,
“must not mate with baking Smiths; shooting Smiths and hunting Smiths,
temperance Smiths and licensed-victualler Smiths, Free Trade Smiths and
Tariff Reform Smiths, must seek partners for life in their own
particular section of the Smithian multitude. The Unionist Smith would
not lead a Home Rule damsel to the altar, nor should Smith the tailor
wed the daughter of a Smith who sold boots.”

In its effect upon women the caste system has been most deleterious
because of the difficulty of finding husbands within the same caste. It
has led to the making away with undesirable daughters, which was
frequently practised by the parents before the English Government
stepped in and made female infanticide a crime and severely punished the
culprits. Yet we are told that the disproportion of female to male
children shows that the practice has not been completely stamped out,
and that many fathers foreseeing the financial difficulties to be
encountered in marrying their daughters, have deliberately made away
with them at birth. In the smaller villages the crime is difficult of
detection, but when the ratio of girls to boys falls particularly low in
a community, the Government quarters extra police upon the people,
making all the inhabitants contribute towards the cost of their
maintenance, and the records soon show that girl babies are again being
born in the villages.

Life in a high-caste Brahman family is much more complicated than that
of the low-caste family, and many burdens are added to the already heavy
ones borne by the Hindu woman, because of the rituals and customs woven
around this caste system. A woman told me that she had a friend who
lived in the house of two maiden aunts who were most orthodox Hindus.
This woman was not allowed to touch a thing in the morning before her
bath. Beside her bed was a long pole with which she must handle her
towels and clothing, and she was not permitted to enter the presence of
her aunts until her uncleanliness had been removed by ablutions and
prayers.

The mother-in-law of my friend has practically no social intercourse
with her son’s wife because she has broken caste, eats with Europeans,
and wears shoes made from leather. Her own mother at first felt her
daughter’s disgrace keenly, and would not see her for many years. At
last love triumphed over custom, and now the mother will visit the
daughter if assured that a place will be made ceremonially clean where
she may spread her mat of holy dharba grass, on which she sits while
chatting. She will receive nothing from the hand of her daughter,
neither water nor food, and when she returns home she takes a complete
bath and changes her wearing apparel that has become polluted by contact
with her daughter’s house.

Orthodox Hindus do not like sitting upon a mat of cloth or walking upon
a carpet. In many houses a wooden bench or board is kept for visitors.
The wife of a Resident in one of the Indian cities gave a reception to
which came several ladies from the conservative Hindu families. They
carefully avoided walking upon the rugs, and sat upon the edge of the
chairs, looking most unhappy. The wife of the Resident asked an advanced
Hindu lady why her afternoon was not a success so far as the Indian
guests were concerned. She was told that the only thought that possessed
these little women was a desire to get home. They wished to be polite
and stay as long as etiquette demanded, but they welcomed with avidity
the finality of the party when they might return and bathe and purify
themselves from the close contact of foreigners and Mohammedans.

The members of the Brahmo Samaj, that progressive offshoot of Hinduism,
have broken caste and allow their women to go about freely. I was in a
town of Southern India with a member of this sect, and we called upon
the head mistress of a large school for girls. She was at home with her
newly born baby, waiting for the forty days of uncleanness to pass
before returning to her school. She was a very intelligent woman,
talking freely of the good and the bad of their social system. She said
that a school for girls such as that of which she was the head, where
four hundred young girls were being educated in modern thought, would
have the greatest influence upon the women of the next generation, but
that it would take time to eradicate the instincts of generations of
ignorance and superstition, so deeply woven into the very nature of the
Indian woman.

At the close of the visit the baby was brought to me, and rather lacking
a subject for conversation I made the unfortunate remark to the baby,
“You will grow up a good Hindu and stick to your caste.” I was not
prepared for the storm of protest it raised from my friend who had
brought me to the home. She turned on me furiously and said: “How can
you say such things, you, a modern woman? Caste is the ruin of India. If
we want progress we must break caste: it is our only hope.”

It is not caste alone that makes the rules that govern the life and
actions of the Indian woman, but from birth to the burning-ground every
detail of life is cast into a mould of ceremony and ritual, which in the
hands of a less spiritual people would have degenerated into mere sham.
Of the sixteen events in the life of a man, all are viewed from a
religious aspect, and accompanied by a religious ceremony. The most
sacred prayers are said in the morning before partaking of food, and it
is the husband, the head of the house, who is supposed to say the
prayers for all beneath his roof-tree. “No sacrifice is allowed to women
apart from their husbands, no religious rite, no fasting; as far as a
wife honours her lord, so far is she exalted in heaven,” says the laws
of Manu, yet the instinct of religion is strong in the Hindu woman, as
it is in women all over the world, and they do perform a worship. At the
time of her marriage, at the marriage of her children, and at many of
the sacred feasts, the wife must sit with her husband during the time he
is engaged in the performance of the acts of worship, though she takes
no active part in the ceremonies. If a man has lost his wife, he cannot
perform the sacrifice of fire.

The Hindu woman has her gods, which she keeps in the kitchen, the most
sacred room in a Hindu household. In all the time I was in India I never
saw the inside of the kitchen of any of my Indian friends. I have been
told that it is divided into two parts, the smaller room used for the
cooking and as pantry for the storing of food, and must be kept free
from ceremonial defilement. The larger half of the kitchen of a
middle-class household serves as dining-room, and in an alcove or in one
corner are the household gods and the utensils to be used in their
worship. None of the images used by a woman are consecrated, but she
lights her lamp and bows her head and prays for the safety of her dear
ones, then offers a bit of fruit or betel or a sweetmeat that she has
prepared, and scatters sandal paste and coloured rice or the petals of
sweet-smelling flowers over her god. There is generally in each tiny
yard or in the kitchen a tulasi plant, around which the women walk while
chanting a prayer. This plant is considered the wife of Vishnu, and is
revered by all. There are many blessings promised to one who attends and
waters one of these plants, and it will keep care and tribulation from
its worshippers and grant pardon to the sinner who cherishes the tulasi
plant. Yet it is more particularly worshipped by women. At one time, it
is said, women were commanded to walk around it one hundred and eight
times each day, which certainly was a blessing from a hygienic point of
view, as it gave exercise to these shut-in women, who are restricted to
the four walls of their homes.

At night when the lamps are lighted the wife makes obeisance to the
flame, saying—

          The flame of this lamp is the supreme good.
          The flame of this lamp is the abode of the Supreme.
          By this flame sin is destroyed,
          Oh, Thou light of the evening, we praise thee.

At the time of the evening meal the men have an elaborate religious
ceremony, but the women say simply, “Govinda, Govinda,” a name for
Vishnu, before partaking of their food.

The devout mother teaches her children the tales of the gods, and at
worship time when the bell is sounded they are taught to place their
hands together in the attitude of prayer and bow their little heads to
the gods. It is the father who is expected to teach them the Vedic texts
and the truths to be found in the Puranas.

The daily worship is held in the homes, but on feast days or for
especial acts of devotion, such as prayers for the blessings of a son,
or the giving of thanks for favours received, the women go to the
temples. These are crowded on holy days or days of anniversary of the
gods. No one ever goes to the temple empty-handed, and one sees the
little brass jar of holy water, the wreath of marigold or sweet-smelling
flowers which are supposed to give pleasure to the aesthetic senses of
the gods. Many women take a coconut to the temple, which fruit seems to
be generally connected with temple worship. The breaking of the coconut
is said to represent the slaying of the sacrificial animal, which is
only done now in the temples dedicated to Kali, that goddess of terror
who delights in the blood of her victims.

While in Benares I visited a temple dedicated to Shiva, in which were
several enormous bulls, the animal sacred to this god. They were of a
bluish grey in colour, and from long living in the temple had become as
clever as the priests in looking for offerings from their worshippers.
But while the priests looked for silver or gold, the bulls had an eagle
eye with which to discern from afar the woman who carried a basket of
grain. They stood at the back of the temple and eyed each worshipper as
she entered. If the pious woman had only a brass water-pot in her hand
they did not move; but if they saw a basket, they immediately started
for her, and graciously allowed her to pour the grain into their open
mouths, the woman taking care that she did not pollute the bulls by
touching their lips with her hand. A wreath of marigolds was then thrown
over the neck of the bull, the holy water was poured on his shoulders,
and he returned to his place. I saw an old lady lovingly stroke the back
of one of these pampered beasts, ending with the tail, the end of which
she used to stroke her face, and afterwards lovingly kissed this
appendage of her idol. The expression on her face was one of deepest
reverence, and for her the great blue bull represented the god for whom
her hungry soul was longing. The educated Hindu would say that she was
struggling to find a god as are we all, but that she was still a child
in matters spiritual and required a material representative of her
ideal. They say that the real Hindu, the man who has studied the Vedas
and understands the spirit of his religion, needs no images nor ritual.
In his prayer he plainly shows that to him God is a spirit. He says—

  Oh, Lord, pardon my three sins. I have in contemplation clothed Thee
  in form, who art formless; I have in praise described Thee, who art
  ineffable; and in visiting shrines I have ignored Thy omnipresence.

[Illustration:

  A HOLY MAN, BENARES.

  To face p. 96.]

In many of the temples, besides the priests to minister to the gods, are
dancing girls, whose duties are to dance at the shrines, sing hymns, and
generally delight the gods. They are a recognized religious institution,
and are honoured next to the priests. They are obtained when quite young
by purchase or by gift. Often in times of famine a girl is sold to the
temple, that her price may save the rest of the family from starvation.
One is given that all may live. In other cases a girl is often a
thank-offering given to the gods because of recovery from sickness or
great tribulation. A rich man, instead of presenting his own daughter,
would buy the daughter of some poor family and present her. These girls,
who have no word to say in regard to the disposal of their persons, are
public women, and the gains of their profession go towards the support
of the temple. If there should be children born to these professional
dancing girls, they are brought up in their mother’s profession, very
much as were the children born to the priestesses of Aphrodite in the
temples of Alexandria.

All Indian girls must be married, consequently these temple women are
formally married to a dagger, a tree, or some inanimate object, who, as
a husband, cannot object to the actions of his wife. Lately, in some
places it has been made a criminal offence to sell a girl or give a
daughter to a temple, and it is only done surreptitiously. One is told
in India that it is a thing of the past, yet in one large temple in the
South there are said to be over one hundred dancing girls kept for the
amusement of the blasé gods.

These dancing girls share with their sisters, the nautch girls, the only
real freedom given to Indian women. The latter are taught to read and
write, to play musical instruments, and to make themselves attractive
and charming to men. They come and go freely, mingling with both men and
women. They are found at all feasts and public ceremonies, and have a
very definite and honourable place in Indian society. Whatever discredit
may be attached to her calling, she is considered a necessary adjunct to
the temple and the home. Her presence at weddings is considered most
fortunate, and in some castes it is the nautch girl who fastens the tali
around the neck of the bride, a ceremony similar to placing the
wedding-ring upon the finger. She holds the centre of the stage at all
entertainments given in honour of guests. While we were in a native
province ruled by a prince who had the reputation of liking wine, women,
and song even more than did the average ruling prince in India, we were
edified by the dancing of a woman brought from Bombay at the expense to
the prince of nearly one hundred pounds a day.

The dancing is extremely modest, as the dancer is fully clothed, and it
is the graceful, languorous poses of her slim body, the waving of her
arms heavily laden with bracelets, and the slow moving, gliding steps
that keep time to the tinkle of the anklets, that charm her admirers.
There is a proverb that says, “Without the jingling of the nautch girl’s
anklets, a dwelling-place does not become pure.”




                               CHAPTER VI
                            INDIAN HOME LIFE


Although the women are supposed to have no religious standing and are
considered unfit to read the Vedas or touch the consecrated gods, still
their entire life is influenced by religion or superstition, and the
religion and superstition of the Eastern woman, of whatever land, is so
inextricably entwined, that it is hard to tell where one leaves off and
the other begins. Like her sisters of China and Egypt, she is afraid of
the evil eye. She firmly believes that if her jewels, her dress, or her
children are looked upon with jealous or covetous eyes, much sorrow will
come to her, and she has many charms and ceremonies with which to
counteract the baneful influence of spiteful persons. It is never wise
for a visitor to regard a baby too closely or to admire its jewels or
clothing openly, as, even if the mother is one of the advanced minority,
instinct will assert itself, and deep within her heart, bred there by
centuries of tradition, will be a little feeling that something _might_
happen to her dear one. Quite likely, when the unwise caller departs,
the mother will make a lamp of kneaded rice flour and fill it with oil
or clarified butter, which, when lighted and passed round the baby’s
head, will remove the dreaded evil.

The Hindu woman’s life is ruled by omens to a far greater extent than is
the life of the woman of the Western world. If she is starting on a
visit to a friend, it is a very bad sign for her to meet a widow, any
one carrying a new pot, a bundle of firewood, a pariah, a lame man, two
men quarrelling, a leper—in fact, there are about a dozen things she
should avoid, or else be under the necessity of returning to her home
and saying a few prayers before daring to start on her journey again. If
she should sneeze once, it is most unfortunate, and should be followed
by a second in order to avert the evil, but if the second sneeze is
followed by others, the more the better, it is a most certain sign that
her most ardent wishes will soon be granted. When one yawns it is polite
to snap the fingers and say, “Govinda, Govinda,” as many believe that
the life may leave the body while yawning, and to avert this calamity
from a baby the mother snaps her fingers and murmurs, “Krishna,
Krishna,” in its tiny ears.

Mohammedan and Hindu customs are so much alike that it is often hard to
say that one is a Mohammedan custom or that another is purely Hindu. At
the marriages, and the return of the daughter to her home to give birth
to her first child, at the birth of the children, and in many of the
social customs of the Mohammedans are seen the influence of the Hindu
religion. It was the Mohammedans who brought the “purdah” system, or the
seclusion of women, into India. Before the invasion of these warlike
people the women of India went about freely, but now the Hindus are
practically as secluded as are the Mohammedan women. In the North, where
the influence of the followers of the Arabian prophet made itself most
dominant, the women are much more secluded than in the South, where the
Mohammedans did not come in such large numbers.

It is in the villages that true India is to be found, unchanging,
languorous India. Here is a self-centered commonwealth, with little
dependence for its welfare upon the outer world, and the people have
remained the same as their fathers and their father’s fathers,
impervious to new innovations and ideas. To look at one of these
villages is very different from ideas one may have formed of them by
reading books of travel. The first impression received upon entering one
is that of an enlarged barnyard, as cows and farm implements take entire
possession of the narrow streets. The low, thatched mud houses are
without doors, windows, or chimneys. The floor is generally plastered
with cow dung, which, when dry, leaves a hard shellac-like polish,
considered by the natives most sanitary. It has to be redone every two
weeks, and to Western eyes is a most unsightly operation, as it is done
with the hands of the housewife. It is said that when the Salvation Army
sent its first volunteers to India, they required them to live the life
of the Indian, and that this smearing of the earthen floors with the
national substitute for varnish was one of the chief causes why women
were not always ready to volunteer for service in the East.

There is virtually no furniture in the homes. The stove consists of
three or four bricks, around which the fuel, consisting of dried cakes
of mud and cowdung, are broken, and which smoulder rather than burn. A
few earthenware pots and a large dish in which to serve the food, some
brass utensils, and a large jar for carrying water, complete the
culinary arrangements. For plates, banana or plantain leaves are used,
or, lacking these, small leaves are sewn together. This saves the
drudgery of washing dishes, as the leaves are thrown away after each
meal, and the fingers are used in place of the knives and forks of the
more aesthetic races. Chairs and tables are not needed, as the Indian
squats upon his haunches, as only an Oriental can; and in silence,
regarding only his own food, to which he helps himself from the central
dish, he eats his meal. When the lord of the household has finished, he
graciously allows his wife to eat from the same leaf. No Indian woman
who conforms to the customs of her race ever eats at the table with the
men of her household, yet this is not confined to the women of India.
The separation of the men from the women at the dinner-table is
practised by all Orientals. The women of China and Japan eat with the
younger children when the master of the house has finished, and no
Egyptian husband, unless one of the small class who have become
thoroughly Westernized, would think of inviting his wife to share with
him his evening meal.

In the village homes the man shows his superiority also in the fact that
the only bed in the house of the peasant or workman is that for the
master, if bed it can be called—simply a rough framework of wood with
coir ropes strung across it. The extra wardrobe of the family, if they
are so fortunate as to possess more than the one garment which they
wear, is hung on a pole in a corner of the room, and need not take much
space, as the clothing of India’s poor is scant—a loin-cloth, a sheet
for the shoulders, and a long piece of cotton for the head suffices him.
His wife will only possess a tight-fitting little bodice, and six yards
of cloth which she will drape gracefully around her body, making it
serve both as dress and head covering. Yet the woman’s arms are covered
often with bracelets, anklets tinkle as she walks, and as she draws her
sari across her face when passing the stranger, the glint of a nose-ring
is seen, or the light flashes from a necklace that rests against her
brown skin. This jewellery may be of gold, silver, brass, or even of
glass, but the woman of the village loves these aids to feminine charms
as well as does her city sister. In the olden time the peasant had no
trust in banks, and when he accumulated a few extra rupees, he added a
bangle to his wife’s arm, or bought a nose or ear-ring. It served the
double purpose of saving money which might be foolishly spent at the
autumn fair, and also was easy to take to the moneylender in times of
stress. There are many thousands of pounds of gold that go into India
each year and disappear. The officials say it is turned into jewellery
for these wives and daughters of India’s great middle class, who seem
never too poor to have a touch of gold or silver upon the persons of
their womenfolk.

The village wife is relieved of the necessity of providing clothing for
the children, because until they are seven or eight years old an amulet
string or a silver anklet completes their wardrobe. There are many of
these little brown bodies around every doorway, looking like
dark-skinned cupids. One rarely sees a child in India with a bad skin,
which perhaps is due to the oil-baths which they receive in early
childhood. Mothers bathe their babies in oil, then wash it off with a
vegetable soap, leaving the skin soft and shining as satin. This is a
luxury indulged in by older people also, and the giving of oils for the
bath is a favourite present among friends.

In the shade of the porch is often seen a cradle, a very simple affair
made of four pieces of wood with a hammock of cloth held between them.
Around the top of the cloth is arranged baby’s toys so that he may lie
and amuse himself, which is quite necessary where the mother has as many
household duties to attend to as the Indian farmer’s wife. In places
where the woman is working in the field, the baby may be seen wrapped in
a hammock-like affair and tied to the limb of a tree; and it is a common
practice among labouring women, I am told, to give the babies a drug to
keep them quiet while the mothers work. Opium is very generally used in
India, especially among the higher classes, although forbidden by both
Hindu and the Mohammedan religion. It is supposed to invigorate the
aged, and an Indian told me that he thoroughly believed that all men
after they pass the age of fifty were better for the moderate use of
opium.

The wife of the village man or peasant is not “purdah nashim,” or
secluded, as is the wife of the rich man. She takes her share in the
agricultural work, besides carrying water from the village well, making
the cakes of fuel and plastering them against the side of the house to
dry, grinding the meal, husking the rice, washing the clothing, and
cooking the meals. Yet with all her work the monotony of her life is
broken by many feasts and ceremonies in which she takes a part. Each
district and temple has its own particular fête day, and there are many
family feasts where work is given up at the time of special rejoicing.
Relatives and friends meet together, the houses are decorated, bright
saris are brought forth, and the time is spent in pleasure and
merry-making. There are eighteen obligatory feasts in the year for the
orthodox Hindu, but only a few of the principal ones are celebrated.

Many of the ceremonies in the home originated in sanitary laws, which
would not have been obeyed unless the people were made to believe that
they were of divine origin. At a certain time of the year when smallpox
is rife, and the epidemic has passed, there is a worship of the
“Mother,” which requires the house to be thoroughly cleaned and
purified, all the old vessels broken, all old clothing burned or placed
in the sun for a certain time, before the women are permitted to go to
the temple to worship their favourite goddess. There is another spring
feast, when the women go down to the water dressed in yellow, and send
small lighted lamps down the stream to the spring goddess. At the feast
of the serpents the villagers take offerings to the sand-hills, and pour
milk and honey into the holes where the snakes are supposed to dwell,
asking protection of these gods of wisdom, who especially guard the eyes
of their worshippers. At another feast the women take red water and
sprinkle it upon each other, rejoicing over the slaying of the giant god
of evil. The girls take part in a pretty feast in the fall, when they
decorate their little brothers with flowers and garland the houses, and
at night light innumerable little lamps, making a village look like a
miniature fairyland.

The village women appear rather sullen, but when known they are found to
be as happy as is the wife of the average working man. If there is no
drought drying up the crops, if no disease comes to the cattle, if the
moneylender is not too avaricious, if a few pennies can be saved to buy
bracelets from the bangle-man at the annual festival, and if the gods do
not disgrace her by sending too many daughters, she is happy. Yet the
village woman and her family are always but half a step in advance of
the waiting wolf; famine comes with swiftness, and quick deaths from
plagues to hundreds of thousands of these peasant people, who constitute
nine-tenths of the population of India.

The life of the women in the small towns and villages is like life in
another world compared to that led by the women in the large cities of
Calcutta or Bombay or Madras. Here the Indian lady seems to be trying to
lose her national characteristics, and Indian society is very
disappointing to a visitor from the West who wishes to see something of
the life lived by the lady of India. It seems to be merely a copy of the
life of the English society woman, and her day is filled with teas,
society concerts, and receptions. Their homes are thoroughly English in
every department, their drawing-rooms are filled with English
bric-à-brac, they go to the entertainments in most luxurious motors;
their children, dressed in European clothes, are brought down to see the
guest by an English governess, and English is the language of the home.
Many of the Indian women are members of clubs, musical societies, and
are taking active part in the charities for the benefit of their people.

The Indian woman wields a strong influence over her husband, and has
more of a place in the life around her than we imagine, from the stories
we hear of unhappy days spent “Behind Zenana Bars.” We are apt to
consider the secluded, shut-in Eastern woman as a cowed, frightened
creature, afraid to say her soul is her own, while among the better
class, at least, it is quite the contrary. It takes a brave man to go
absolutely against the wishes of his womenfolk, as they have the
advantage of numbers in their favour. In every great household there are
innumerable women relatives, satellites, and servants revolving around
the personality of the mistress. These Eastern women have been schooled
in the art of intrigue and understand thoroughly the efficacy of passive
resistance. If the wife wishes to accomplish a certain object, and is
able to enlist the women of the household on her side, the man will be
compelled sooner or later to submit to her wishes.

The older, conservative women are very tyrannical, and try their best to
combat the newer ideas brought to the zenanas by their sons and
daughters. Many of the younger generation are trying to break from the
patriarchal custom of all the family living under one roof. They say it
is very fine in theory, and has worked with good results in the
villages, but that it has many bad points, the chief of which is that it
allows no expression of individuality. The personality must be sunk in
the family. When all the men will work and become producers and
contributors to the family fund, it makes for harmony in the home, but
when some are drones and live on the toil of others, it makes the burden
too heavy for the few and causes quarrels and dissensions.

Women are helpless in India in the earning of a living for themselves,
and if widowhood comes they must depend for support on some male
relative of their own or of the family of their deceased husband. I know
a boy of eighteen who is the only support of his wife, his aunt, a
widow, his widowed mother, and his young sister. He was compelled to
leave school and take a position in an office in order to take care of
all these women, as he was the responsible head of the family. It is
hard for a boy who is ambitious and anxious to obtain an education, when
there are many women in his household, as they care more for the
immediate necessities than for a prospective successful future. They
feel that his father and his father’s father were able to provide for
the wants of the family, so why should the boys of to-day spend years in
studying books when they might be adding to the family exchequer?

It is the women who are compelling the younger boys and girls to conform
to the old usages and traditions in regard to marriage. Many a boy
leaves school and would like a chance to find a place for himself in
life before burdening himself with a wife. But this he is not allowed to
do. His mother believes that all boys should be married early in life,
consequently the boy is saddled with a family at about the age when the
American boy is taking his first shy look at the girl across the aisle
in the schoolroom. These modern young men would also like to have a
voice in the selection of their wives, but that also is denied them.
They must conform to the traditions of their caste and the customs of
their family. I know a boy who was compelled to marry his niece,
although his education had taught him that these intermarriages were not
for the good of his race; still, he was helpless, and could not
successfully oppose the combined wishes of the women of his family.

Side by side with these Indian women who guard jealously the customs and
traditions of other days are the Westernized society women, who seem to
share with their husbands in the spirit of imitation that has entered
into the very soul of the Indian people who have come into contact with
the English. The Indian gentleman feels that he must talk “sport,” the
schoolboy prides himself upon the knowledge of cricket and football and
talks the jargon of Eton and Rugby. Because the meat-eating Englishmen
from cold, dreary England must exercise in order to live, the Indian
also devotes himself to a strenuous regime that is absolutely alien to
his habits and the requirements of his climate. The Indian lady, with
her exaggerated English accent, and her costume that is neither of the
East nor of the West, is a paradox. She may well be zealous in borrowing
what she needs from the English, but it seems hard for her to assimilate
what she takes and make it a part of herself. The affectations which she
uses to show her cosmopolitanism are palpably grafted upon her tree of
knowledge, and we who wish to see the real India are only consoled in
the thought that these unusual conditions which prevail in the large
cities are only the graftings, and that the tree itself is not affected
by them. The real woman of India is bound to grow in knowledge brought
by education and experience, but deep down in her heart she will be
essentially the same for years to come. She will not try to exchange her
personality for another’s, even in outward appearance.

The dawn of consciousness that has been preceded by long twilight is now
awakening in the soul of the Eastern woman, and she will see by its
light that she has a strength and individuality of her own and that she
need not mortgage her birthright to borrow alien charms from the women
of other lands.




                              CHAPTER VII
                       MARRIAGE—THE GOAL OF WOMAN


There are three great events in a Hindu woman’s life: first, her
marriage; second, the birth of her son; and third, if she should be so
unfortunate, her widowhood.

These three events are of immense importance to all women, but as a
woman of the Far East is supposed to be created for one purpose only,
the rearing of sons to her husband’s house, marriage and birth of
children assume a larger place in her life than in the life of the
Western woman, where these two events are often merely incidents. Also
when a Hindu woman marries she expects to stay married, as she cannot
divorce her husband, and he can only divorce her for infidelity. Even
death will not open for her the doorway to remarriage, because if her
husband should die before her, she must remain true to his memory for
life.

The woman’s inclinations are seldom consulted in regard to the choice of
a husband, because, quite likely, when she is not much more than a
child, her parents begin to look around for a suitable alliance for her.
Their choice must fall upon a man of the same caste, a relative if
possible. The prospective bridegroom may be a young boy, or he may be an
old man, a widower. The girl _must_ be married. There are no reasons in
the Hindu philosophy which allow a girl to pass the marriageable age
without a husband being chosen for her. Men may become “sanyassis,” that
is, renounce the world and remain bachelors, but this is not allowed
women under any circumstances, as they must fulfil their destiny, which
is to be the mothers of men.

If a girl passes the marriageable age, if she should be twelve or
thirteen without being settled in life, her family would feel that they
were disgraced, and she would have slight opportunity for marriage in
any respectable family. Therefore, it is incumbent upon her parents to
find for her a husband as soon as possible, which leads to one of the
greatest crimes against Indian womanhood—child marriages.

There are many preliminaries to be arranged before the final choice of a
bridegroom is decided, but when he is found at last, the important
question of the dowry arises. In some places the father of the bride
gives a dowry with his daughter, in others the groom’s father pays a
certain sum to the parents of the little bride, practically buying her.
Nearly every caste has a different mode of procedure regarding the
exchange of presents and money.

The girl’s personal jewellery and everything she receives from her
future father-in-law, or that she takes with her to her new home, are
most clearly set down, article by article, in a document, and constitute
her own personal property, which she may claim if she becomes a widow.

Marriage is a most ruinous operation financially for the parents,
especially for the father of the bride. He must give a feast lasting for
five days to all friends and relatives, presents to all the contracting
parties, and great liberality must be shown the Brahmans and priests who
assist in the ceremony. If his new son-in-law is an educated youth, he
will demand a much larger dowry with his bride, in these days when
Western education is meaning so much in the life of the Indian youth. If
he is a “failed B.A.,” he may only demand, we will say, one thousand
rupees from his father-in-law. If he successfully passed his
examinations and is a full B.A., he quite likely would feel that those
letters added to his name were worth at least two thousand rupees; and
if he should by chance be a Doctor of Laws, his demands might be limited
only by the knowledge of the amount of gold the father of his bride has
stored for this emergency.

After the preliminary ceremonies have been concluded and the family
priest has decided upon the most propitious day for the nuptials, the
family begin to make preparations for the wedding. Invitations are taken
to friends and relatives who are within visiting distance by the women
of the household, who make upon the forehead of the invited female guest
the round red caste mark, and leave a small bundle of pan leaves and
betel-nut for the other members of the family. Often a little sandalwood
paste is touched to the chin and between the shoulders by the bearer of
the invitation. Mohammedan ladies send a tiny mica box with a cardamom
seed in it and a piece of confectionery, which is given with the verbal
invitation by the messenger, who must, if possible, be some member of
the family instead of a servant.

In the case of rich people the strong box is opened and the hoarded
rupees brought forth with which to buy the gold and silver jewellery for
both bride and groom, the elaborate wedding garments, and the saris,
which are given as presents to the women guests, and shawls for the men;
the store-rooms are examined to make sure that there is rice in plenty,
also wheat flour, butter, oil of sessaman, peas, vegetables, fruits,
pickles, curries, in fact, all the many foodstuffs necessary in the
preparation of the elaborate feasts which are the main events of the
wedding. Sandalwood powder is bought in great quantities, antimony for
the eyes, incense, the red paste which wives use on the forehead, and
innumerable numbers of the beautiful flower wreaths with which the
guests are garlanded after the entertainments. Plenty of new earthen
dishes are selected from the potters’ store, for these vessels may never
be used the second time.

In the case of the poor man, now is the time when the visits are made to
the moneylender, because, rich or poor, prince or peasant, there must be
no question of stint at this time of rejoicing.

A wedding is a very gorgeous affair, being limited only by the means of
the contracting parties, but it is generally conceded that all Indians,
of whatever class of society they may be members, spend far too much
upon the nuptials of their children.

Each one of the five days has its especial religious rite. One ceremony
typifies the giving of the girl by the father to the husband and the
renunciation of his parental authority. On another day the husband
fastens the tali around his young wife’s neck, which is practically the
same as placing the marriage-ring upon the finger of the new bride. This
tali is a small gold ornament strung on a little cord composed of one
hundred and eight very fine threads closely twisted together and dyed
yellow with saffron. Before tying the tali it is taken to the guests,
both men and women, who bless it. Old ladies whose husbands are alive
are specially requested to bless the tali, in order to insure the couple
a long married life. This symbol of wifehood is tied with three knots,
thus trebly ensuring the marriage tie, and is never to be removed unless
the wearer is so unfortunate as to become a widow, when the cord is cut.
The most unkind thing one woman can say to another is, “May your tali be
cut!”

After the tying of this emblem the newly married couple walk three times
around a lighted fire, which is the ultimate binding of the marriage
contract, for there is no more solemn engagement than that which is
entered into in the presence of fire. Rice is thrown over the pair, and
they throw it upon each other, signalling that they hope to enjoy an
abundance of this world’s goods and a fruitful union. Rice is used at
weddings in nearly all Eastern countries as typifying prosperity and
fruitfulness, and it is perhaps from the Far East that we borrow our
custom of throwing rice upon the newly married pair.

Many Hindu women wear, in addition to the tali, an iron bracelet to
indicate their marriage state. Among the rich it is gilded and,
consequently, not easily distinguished from the many bracelets that
always cover the Indian lady’s arm.

A young Hindu boy is not supposed to chew betel-nut nor put flowers in
his hair until he is married. On the fourth day of the marriage
festivities the groom is given his first betel-nut by his
brother-in-law, and his head is wreathed with flowers. In a few castes
the bride has her left nostril bored on the fifth day of the marriage
and an ornament placed therein. After marriage in some parts of India
the woman wears a streak of red powder in the parting of her hair, and
in practically all provinces she wears the little round mark of wifehood
between the eyes, which, as age comes, is elongated, until gradually, by
the time that children and grandchildren cluster around her knee, the
little red mark has grown into a straight line, losing itself in the
whitening locks. In Mysore and in some of the southern provinces a woman
does not tuck up her dress in the back until she is married. Then an end
of the long sari, which is twisted several times around the body, is
brought from the front to the back and tucked into a belt, forming a
sort of trousers, and incidentally exposing more brown leg than we women
of the Western world think consistent with modesty.

At the final feast the bride and groom eat together from the same leaf
to show their complete union. This is the first and last time that the
wife will eat in company with her husband, if he is an orthodox Hindu
and not imbued with the new Western ideas. Always, in the future, she
will serve him his meal, and after he has finished she will eat with the
other women of the household and the smaller children, using the same
leaf which has done service for her lord and master.

When all the religious rites are finished and the festivities have come
to an end, there is a final procession, when the wife and husband,
gorgeously arrayed in all their jewellery, are carried round the town to
the accompaniment of music, the explosion of fire crackers, the shooting
of rockets, and the shouting of friends. Then, if the bride is still a
child, she returns home with her parents, who keep her secluded until
the time arrives for her to return to her husband’s home and fulfil the
duties of a wife. The day the husband and mother-in-law come to take the
wife to their home is made another time of rejoicing. She remains with
them for a month when she revisits her old home, and often for the first
few years, or until she has children, she lives alternately in her
husband’s house and in that of her parents. If she finds herself
ill-treated by her husband and tormented by her mother-in-law, the young
girl often seeks her father’s home for shelter and protection, and
remains with them until the husband or his mother come in person to
persuade her to return home. Nearly always her family add their
persuasions, if not their force, to compel the wife to return to her
husband’s roof, as it is a great disgrace to all concerned to have a
wife leave her husband. After the children come, the wife rarely leaves
her house and devotes her time and energies to the rearing of the little
ones that fill all homes, from the mansions of the rich to the huts of
the poor peasants. There seem to be more little brown bodies in India
than in any place I have visited, unless I except China, where the
staple articles are rice and babies.

The new wife has to accommodate herself to the customs of her husband’s
family, and much of her future happiness depends upon the women members
of the household. If it is a very aristocratic family, she may have all
the luxuries of life, beautiful gold-embroidered saris, jewels,
servants, and slaves, but very little liberty. There is a saying that
you can tell the degree of a family’s aristocracy by the height of the
windows in the home. The higher the rank, the smaller and higher are the
windows and the more secluded the women. An ordinary lady may walk in
the garden and hear the birds sing and see the flowers. A higher grade
lady may only look at them from her windows, and if she is a very great
lady indeed, this even is forbidden her, as the windows are high up near
the ceiling, merely slits in the wall for the lighting and ventilation
of the room.

There are many rules of etiquette prescribed for the young girl-wife if
she would show that she has been properly trained by her parents. For
example, she must never speak of her husband by name, nor may she use a
word with the same syllable as her husband’s first name. A friend of
mine has a husband whose name begins with the same syllable as that used
in the word sugar. She always speaks of sugar as “the substance you put
in your tea,” and she generally refers to her husband as “he.” Nor would
the man say “my wife,” but “my house,” or some word denoting the home. A
man in Hyderabad met his doctor on the street and said, “I wish you
would come and see me. My house has a boil on its neck.”

This same wife would not sit in the presence of her mother-in-law or her
husband if others were present. It would show extreme lack of respect;
nor would she speak if her husband were in the room. We called upon the
wife of a high official of Bangalore, who came into the room with her
daughter-in-law and her young daughter, an extremely pretty girl. The
daughter-in-law would not sit down in the presence of her husband’s
mother, nor did she speak, and looked extremely awkward and
self-conscious, as she stood with her sari drawn across her mouth and
watched us with her big black eyes. The little daughter played the
veena, the national instrument, and as she sat upon the rug, gorgeously
arrayed in an elaborate red and gold sari, with jewellery on arms, neck,
ankles, toes, and with diamonds in each tiny nostril, she made a picture
never to be forgotten.

In some of the big households where the sons bring their wives to live
beneath the family roof-tree, the married quarters are not large enough
to allow a separate room for each couple, and the women sleep in one
room and the men in another. The mother has the right of assigning the
couples who are to inhabit the married quarters for the week. But even
the eagle eye of the mother-in-law cannot always watch the young people,
and many a girl-wife steals across the courtyard to find her husband,
who is waiting for her in the shadows. A crowd of young men in a school
were asked to give their idea of what was the most beautiful music in
the world. One answered, “The song of the bul-bul,” another, “The
plaintive strains of the zither,” a third, “The cry of the night bird,”
but a young bridegroom said, “The music of my wife’s anklets as she
tries to suppress their sound when she steals to meet me in the
moonlight.”

One is amazed at the amount of jewellery worn by the Indian women, yet
this vanity is not confined solely to the women, as in some of the
provinces nearly every man has a jewel in his ear, and many of them wear
most expensive finger-rings. The women excel in the artistic use of
jewellery that on other people would seem tawdry and barbaric, but on
these dainty little women is most becoming to their rich, dark beauty.
Jewellery is not only worn by the lady, but women of every class are
covered with it. The village woman will have perhaps but one cotton
sari, and her home would be merely a mud hovel, but she will clink as
she walks, and you know she wears silver anklets, and as she moves her
sari to peep at you, you see the glisten of a bracelet. It may be of
brass or it may be of silver, or, if she be very poor, coloured glass
bangles will satisfy her cravings for the beautiful, and her arms will
be covered with these ornaments from the wrist to the elbow.

At a railway-station near Baroda I saw women whose legs to the knee were
covered with huge brass bands that must have been most inconvenient and
heavy to carry. In Poona we stopped to watch a merchant of toe-rings
place his wares upon his patron’s toes which were held out to him for
the purpose. The rings were so tight that soap had to be used to force
them over the twinging toes. The operation was most painful to vanity,
judging from the faces of the victims, but evidently the sight of the
shining ring as they trudged down the dusty road repaid them for the
suffering they had undergone. In this same market were innumerable
booths for the sale of the glass bracelets that are worn by all the
women of India, with the exception of widows. I watched an old woman in
the bangle bazaar working them over the hands of the women who sat on
the ground in front of her, prepared to spend unlimited time in
acquiring these articles of adornment. The purchaser made her choice
from the green or gold or red bangles piled carelessly upon the trays in
front of her, then the bangle-seller squeezed and manipulated the hand,
slowly working, pushing, coaxing the bangle over the hand, until finally
it was on the arm, where evidently it would remain.

My husband and I dined with a Mohammedan who, after dinner, asked me
into the zenana to meet his wife. The bareness of my arms shocked her,
and she insisted upon presenting me with three bracelets for each arm,
working them on so skilfully that it did not pain me, but on arriving at
the hotel I found I could not remove them. I tried to persuade the
Indian servant to break them for me, but he was horrified and said it
would bring me very bad luck, as only widows had them broken on the arm.
I feared I would be compelled to wear them all my life as my husband
would not break them, having overheard the remarks about the widow.
Finally I broke them myself, much to the detriment of my arms, which
carried the scars for many days.

There is an immense amount of money going into India each year that
never gets into circulation, as the gold coins are strung upon chains or
melted to make the bracelets for the women and children. Life could be
made much more comfortable for the Indian peasant if he would turn the
money invested in jewellery for his womenfolk into comforts for the
home.

The Hindu woman has few legal rights. Any property which her husband
wishes to leave her must be given to her in his lifetime, as she cannot
inherit his estate, but she may claim maintenance from his heirs, and if
she should survive her son, she may become his legal heir. The male
relatives are supposed to provide maintenance for the women of the
family.

An outsider looking upon the Hindu home does not see where real union
can possibly exist between a husband and wife. This is especially true
at the present time, when nearly all the better class of India’s sons
are being educated, and are reading, listening, touching hands with the
outside world. The women of the middle and lower classes, except in rare
cases, are practically without education, few being able to read or
write. The signs point to the fact that they will not long remain in
this ignorant state, because the young men are demanding educated wives,
and a desire for education is abroad in the land, although an old
proverb says that to educate a woman is like placing a knife in the
hands of a monkey. The English Government is establishing schools for
girls in every town and village, and in Baroda enforced schooling is
demanded for girls as well as for boys. But because of the early
marriage of the girl, she has little opportunity of becoming a real
companion to her husband, as he may continue his studies for years,
while, when she becomes a wife, her schooldays are over.

I met a gentleman of about fifty years of age in the South of India who
asked me to call upon his wife, a young girl of seventeen years, who
became his bride at the age of twelve. She was not at all what the
average girl of seventeen years would be in England or America. She was
the polite hostess, with no trace of self-consciousness or gaucherie,
graceful in her every movement. She was exquisitely dressed and covered
with jewels. Large diamond clusters were in her ears, diamonds in each
nostril, and around her neck a chain of rubies with a large pendant of
pearls. Her manners were charming, and as we were parting she excused
herself for a moment then returned to the room with a small tray on
which was the red powder for the caste mark, betel-nut, fruit, and a
small bouquet of flowers. She came to each of us and bowed, then with
her right hand made the mark of wifehood upon our foreheads, and handed
us the betel-nut and flowers. This gracious and pretty service is one of
the many little kindly acts that are always performed by the hostess
herself, as it would not be polite to delegate it to a servant.

I was charmed with this dainty little woman, yet I could not help
thinking that she might be a pretty toy, but not a companion to the man
with whom I had been conversing a few hours previous, and in whose
library I had seen Emerson’s “Essays,” Farrar’s “Life of Christ,”
“Pilgrim’s Progress,” the works of Tolstoy, Epictetus, and lying upon
the desk, as if just left by the master, Maeterlinck’s “Life and Death.”

According to the ethical, moral, and religious standards of the Hindus,
man and woman are equal. The Vedas teach—

  Before the creation of this phenomenal world, the first born Lord of
  all creatures divided his own self in two halves so that one half
  should be male and the other half female. Just as the halves of
  fruit possess the same nature, the same attributes and the same
  properties in equal proportion, so man and woman, being the equal
  halves of the same substance, possess equal rights, equal
  privileges, and equal power.

This sounds very well in print, and learned Hindus quote us the Vedas to
show that in their country women and men are considered equal. They are
most indignant at the conception by the Western people of the treatment
accorded the Indian woman by her husband. They say that books are filled
with the stories of the brutality of husbands who marry these girl-wives
without love on either side, yet they point out that it is a well-known
fact that there are fewer wife-beaters in India than there are in
England. Manu, the great law-giver, says, “A woman’s body must not be
struck hard even with a flower, because it is sacred.”

In the olden time we are told that women were well versed in the Vedas,
although it is now claimed that they are forbidden to read them or to be
taught their truths. It is known that two of the famous songs of the Rig
Veda were revealed by women, and when Sankaracharya, the great
commentator of the Vedanta, was discussing this philosophy with another
savant, a Hindu lady well versed in the Hindu scriptures was requested
to act as umpire.

Whatever may have been her position in former times, at present there is
no woman on earth who reveals more true attachment and devotion to her
husband than does the Hindu wife. There is a beautiful saying, “Man is
strength, woman is beauty; he is the reason that governs and she is the
wisdom that moderates.”

In the Mahrabarata we find this definition of a woman—

            A man’s wife is his truest friend;
            A loving wife is a perpetual spring
            Of virtue, pleasure, wealth; a faithful
            Wife is his best aid in seeking Heavenly bliss.
            A sweetly speaking wife is a companion
              In solitude, a father in advice,
            A mother in all seasons of distress,
            A rest in passing through life’s wilderness.




                              CHAPTER VIII
                           INDIAN MOTHERHOOD


When it is known that the girl-wife is to fulfil her destiny by giving
her lord a child, she becomes a person of importance in her home circle,
and there are endless ceremonies to be observed. Feasts are given
friends, and many days are passed in rejoicing. One of the earliest
celebrations is given the children of all friends and relatives, when
the glass-bangle man comes with his wares, which are bought and freely
distributed to the guests. About two months before the baby is expected
the mother takes the daughter to her home, where she remains until after
the formal purification, which is forty days after the birth of a girl,
and thirty should she be so fortunate as to give a man-child to the
world. At the end of that time her husband or his mother must come and
take her home again. It would be an insult to send a lesser person,
unless it were absolutely impossible for either of them to be the
messenger. This custom of the young mother giving birth to her first
child under her own family roof-tree is followed by Mohammedans as well
as by Hindus.

The midwife in the villages is generally the wife of the barber, and
naturally her knowledge of medicine is very much limited. She is ruled
entirely by superstition and old-time custom. Her chief knowledge
consists in different prayers, and a woman who is an expert in this
field of obstetrics is always in demand, because there is no time when
prayers are a greater necessity than at the birth of a child. Both the
baby and its mother are peculiarly susceptible to the evil eye, to the
influences of lucky and unlucky days, and a thousand other superstitions
that make this time of a woman’s life one of great danger. Happily for
Indian women, the Marchioness of Dufferin, and the wives of other
viceroys, have taken the cause of Indian womanhood to heart, and have
established hospitals for women and supply nurses for the home. There
are nearly two hundred and fifty hospitals and dispensaries throughout
India, and women doctors with degrees from the highest institutions in
Europe are giving their life to help the women of India. These doctors,
with their assistants, their native students, and trained nurses, during
the year 1903 took care of a million and a half of girls and women. Yet
there is a vast opportunity for the enlarging of the work, as I was told
that there are still a hundred million people who have no knowledge of
the blessings to be obtained from European medicine and surgery, but who
depend entirely upon the native doctors and midwives.

Many hospitals are maintained by missionaries, who have always been the
forerunners in work to help the helpless, and it will only be a question
of time when the mothers of India will not be compelled to be sacrificed
to the superstition and ignorance of the women who are the only ones
allowed near them in their time of travail. Even the most advanced men
in India to-day would hardly allow a man doctor to attend his wife at
the birth of a child. He would rather lose the life of the wife than so
violate the customs of his class.

When the child is born, the date of the month, the hour of the day, and
the star that is in the ascendant are carefully noted in order that the
guru, or family priest, may cast the horoscope. Many of these
astrologers are astute humbugs, and impose upon the credulity of their
patrons to an enormous degree.

[Illustration:

  CRADLE IN VILLAGE, BARODA.

  To face p. 132.]

The house where a child has been born, as well as those who live in it,
are considered impure for ten days, unless it is a rented house, when
only the room in which the mother lies is unclean, and into which no one
can enter except the midwife. The room is kept extremely warm, and
incense is burned in it every day, and leaves are hung in front of the
door to ward off evil spirits. On the eleventh day the linen and
clothing is sent to the washman, and the mother, taking the child in her
arms and with the husband sitting beside her, goes through the ceremony
of purification by the family priest, after which he purifies the entire
household and the rooms. Still the mother is not supposed to receive her
friends, and must keep apart from the rest of the family until the
thirty or forty days are passed, when she passes through another
purification ceremony, and then goes to the temple to offer sacrifice.
Even the little baby is considered impure for twenty days, and must not
be touched unless clothed in silk or woollen.

The new-comer has a succession of ceremonies to celebrate his arrival
into this world of sorrows. On the twelfth day he is named; on a later
day the first bracelets are put upon his arms and tiny anklets upon his
ankles. When he is six months old he is given his first food. Five kinds
of syrup are made, and the baby is given a taste of each one, and rice
is put into his mouth. The father offers sacrifice to the household
gods, the first loin-cloth is tied on the little man, the women sing,
music is played, and feasting is indulged in by all. Each event is made
the occasion of an elaborate feast, to which friends and relatives are
invited and presents are given to the guests and to the priests. In
fact, the priests seem to be omnipresent at all occasions in a Hindu
family. A woman whom I was visiting was complaining of the many
ceremonies that had taken place in her family during the past year, and
she said that she was thoroughly tired of the worry and expense
connected with them. I said: “But who benefits by these elaborate feasts
and rituals that give so much trouble and cause such an outlay in
presents and money?” She said wearily: “Who benefits? Why, the priests
and the Brahmans. They always reap their harvest, whether we are born,
marry, or die. If we are wicked, we must ask them to intercede for us;
if we are good, we must ask them to thank the gods for us; and if we
die, they must help us across the river of fire. We can do nothing of
ourselves; they are our taskmasters with ever-open palm.”

If the newborn son survives the first two years—and the mortality of
babies is frightful, especially in the cities—he will quite likely have
the opportunity of having the tonsure made for the first time, and this
event is only rivalled by the entertainment given when, whether boy or
girl, the ears are pierced by the goldsmith and it is announced that
babyhood is passed. These endless feasts would be ruinous to the poor
Hindu were it not for the fact that it is practically the only time when
he entertains his friends. There is no promiscuous dinner-giving as
among the Western people; friends are invited only in connection with
some religious rite or to inaugurate a special event in the family.

If a member of one of the higher castes, the mother who has watched her
baby grow from babyhood into boyhood, looks forward to the most solemn
and important event in his life, the ceremony called “the introduction
to knowledge,” when he is invested with the sacred cord. This ceremony
lasts from four to five days and is nearly as expensive as a wedding.
The father must provide many pieces of cotton cloth and small gold and
silver coins to be given as presents to the guests. He must have
unlimited food and a great collection of pottery, because, as at a
marriage feast, the dishes are broken after their first use.

This cord may be seen on all Brahmans and on the members of a few of the
higher castes, hanging from the left shoulder to the right hip. It is
composed of three strands of cotton, each strand formed by nine threads.
The cotton with which it is made must be gathered from the plant by the
hand of a Brahman, and corded and spun by persons of the same caste, in
order that it may not be defiled by passing through the hands of persons
who are ceremonially unclean. For a young boy the cord has only three
strands, but after he is married it is composed of six strands and may
have nine. It is symbolical of the body, speech, and mind, and when the
knots are tied, means that the man who wears the thread has gained
control over these three organs that cause all worldly troubles.

At the end of the ceremony the guests accompany the boy, who is
elaborately dressed and seated in an open palanquin, through the streets
to the sound of singing, music, and merry-making. On his return to his
home, he, for the first time, performs the sacrifice of fire, showing
that he is now a member of his caste and a twice-born son of India.

If the mother belongs to a poor family, quite likely her boy will work
to earn a few annas to add to the family exchequer, or if they are
farmers, his days will be passed in the fields frightening the greedy
crows from the ripening crops or driving away the animals that infest
the fields which are near the jungles. In Baroda, education is
compulsory; but many a mother gets around the law by paying the fine of
two rupees a month, and selling her small boy’s labour for five rupees,
thus gaining a livelihood.

England has established free schools in every town and village, and
there is little excuse even for the boy or girl of poor parents not to
have an education. Even members of the depressed classes, or, as they
are called, the pariahs, have their schools. The question that is
agitating the minds of the educators is what form of education should be
given these sons of a people who have been practically slaves for many
centuries. Many contend that they should have only a technical
education, that the sons of the carpenter caste should be made better
carpenters, and that they should not be made barristers. A lady said to
me: “Said, my sweeper’s son, goes to school, and after getting an
education he naturally feels himself better than his father, a sweeper,
or his uncle, who is my groom. He cannot affiliate himself with a higher
caste than that into which he was born, as they will not accept him, and
he has outgrown his own caste. What is he to do? He puts on a foreign
hat and leaves his home, and in the next census, drops his name of Said
Faruki and becomes John James Jones, a half-caste, and the census-taker
wonders why there has been such an increase in half-castes. The
population of half-castes grows from the lower castes who wish to raise
themselves, but it is kept down in the census returns by the half-castes
who wish to better themselves socially, and call themselves Portuguese
or subjects of some other dark-skinned race of Europeans.”

This question of the education of the Indian youth is a very serious
problem with which those who have the welfare of India at heart have to
contend. Many a boy when he returns to his home and his people says:
“Why did they educate me?” There are few avenues of livelihood open to
the Indian boy, as there is no Army or Navy or Church in which to enlist
so many of the younger sons as in England or America. The main prizes
are the Government offices, and failing these, the chief desire of all
Indians is to be a lawyer. There are few places in the Government employ
now, and the country is flooded with impecunious barristers.

The Indian feels that he has a real grievance in the question of the
Civil Service examinations. For the higher positions in this service it
is necessary for the student to go to England and obtain his degree at
an English university. The question of expense is a bar to the great
majority. One often hears of parents mortgaging their homes and
practically selling themselves to the moneylender for life, that the boy
may have this one great opportunity. If he wins, they have not struggled
in vain, but if he fails, life will be very grey and grim, because quite
likely his life and his son’s, and his son’s son’s life will be given in
a vain attempt to get rid of the burden of debt which seems to always
hang over the heads of India’s poor.

The question of the education of the daughter is not so much a matter of
thought to the middle-class Mohammedan or Hindu mother, because at the
time when, if she were in Western lands, she would be taking her books
under her arm and starting for her first day at school, in India she is
getting married. She may, if in a village, attend the school with her
brothers until she is eight or nine years old, but rarely, except in the
highest classes, does the little girl have a longer opportunity for
study. In the cities the rich families are sending their daughters to
private schools, and the Oriental home is the happy hunting ground for
the English governess, who is engaged to teach, not only the knowledge
to be found in books but also the etiquette to be observed in English
society, as it seems to be the main object in life of the educated
Indian, both man and woman, to be more English in manner than are the
English themselves.

In all the better class homes the piano is seen, and seldom now does the
daughter of the house play upon the veena or any instrument of Indian
music. In Calcutta I went to a reception given by a great Indian lady.
With the exception of the costumes worn by the pretty dark-eyed
Bengalis, and the absence of men, I would have thought I was in an
English house at an afternoon tea. English was spoken by nearly every
one, the music was European, the refreshments were from an English
caterer, and there was no distinct note of India in all the afternoon’s
ceremonies. Most of the ladies wore high-heeled French slippers, and
many of them had their beautifully draped saris twined around bodies
held in place by the French corset, which must have been most
uncomfortable for these people, used to untrammelled freedom in regard
to their dress.

Times are changing so fast in India that it is hard to say “This is a
custom” or “That is a custom.” Education is opening the eyes of the
younger generation of Indian women to the fallacy of many of the
old-time rites and superstitions. Still, many of the mothers are
conservative and feel keenly their daughter’s departure from the beliefs
of her day, yet the pressure is so strong that many of these
conservative mothers are sending their daughters to the schools, both
mission and Government, where in the former they avail themselves
eagerly of the education, but are not influenced by the religious
teaching. One devout Mohammedan mother said to me: “Yes, I send my
daughter to a mission school, as it is the best in our town. I feel that
they cannot hurt her, as she has had a good religious training in the
home.”

A great many of the mothers feel that the present system of education
for women in India is wrong, and that the text-books are not the ones
that should be adopted for the use of Indian children. The stories have
little to do with Indian life, and the children do not understand them.
For instance, stories of snowstorms, ice, and things that are to be seen
in a foreign land, are far above the understanding of the average Indian
girl. It is also said that the girl is taught of Joan of Arc and of
English heroines, but nothing is said of the heroines of Indian history,
nor is anything taught of Indian history before the English occupation.
There is nothing given the child to inspire a feeling of patriotism, nor
is she given any moral training except in the mission schools. She is
given a certain amount of book knowledge, which quite likely she cannot
assimilate, and is considered educated. I remember visiting a girls’
school where the teacher asked a class of girls to recite Wordsworth’s
poetry, extracts from Shelley and Keats; they could tell the place of
birth and give the list of English poets and chronology of the English
kings most glibly, but what actual good it afforded the Indian girl to
have all these interesting facts in her little head I could not see.

The Indian girl learns easily and is often most eloquent. There are no
better public speakers than are the Bengali women, who seem to share
with their men in the alertness of their brain. A prominent educator of
India said:—

  I have come in contact with people from all over the world in my
  capacity as educator, but I believe there are no men of any country
  who can compare with the Indian in quickness of thought and in
  capacity to learn. Within the small round head of the Bengali is a
  dynamo of resistless energy, that is for ever working, either for
  good or bad, but which ever way it turns, we of England must
  recognize its power.

The crying need of India is the great teacher, both man and woman; the
teacher who will really take an interest in his pupils and not feel the
bar of race. This is the fault of the average man who comes to India,
and if he does not have it when he arrives he soon acquires a pride in
being one of the ruling race. The Indian boy and girl are extremely
clever, and feel instantly this racial prejudice of the Englishman, and
consequently resent his attitude of superiority. Tennyson’s indictment
of English schoolmasters could be justly applied to many of the teachers
in India to-day:—

  Because you do profess to teach, and teach us nothing, feeding not
  the heart.

There are wanted teachers who will give the Indian boy and girl the true
value of an education other than its advantages from an economic
standpoint. That must be considered also, and in a land where the crowds
are great and famines many, it assumes even a larger importance in the
lives of the boys who must become the wage-earners, than it does in
Western lands, where life is not such a fierce struggle for the
necessities. But along with the training for the making of a livelihood
should be given another training. These boys and girls of India who are
just starting on the road that their Occidental brothers and sisters
have been treading for many generations should be given the broader view
of education, its worth and meaning. They should be taught by loving
teachers the true knowledge of which so beautiful a definition is given
by Bishop Mant:—

            What is true knowledge! Is it with keen eye
              Of Lucre’s sons to thread the mazy way?
              Is it of civil rights, and royal sway,
            And wealth political, the depths to try?
            Is it to delve the earth, to soar the sky?
              To marshal nations, tribes in just array;
              To mix and analyze, and mete and weigh
            Her elements, and all her powers descry?
            These things, who will may know them, if to know
              Breed not vainglory; but, o’er all, to scan
            God in his works and Word shown forth below,
              Creation’s wonders and Redemption’s plan;
            Whence came we, what to do, and whither go:
              This is true knowledge, and the whole of man.




                               CHAPTER IX
                             WOMAN’S SORROW


Abbe Du Bois says: “The happiest death for a woman is that which
overtakes her while she is still in a wedded state. Such a death is
looked upon as a reward of goodness extending back for many generations;
on the other hand, the greatest misfortune that can befall a wife is to
survive her husband.”

Death is a tragedy in all lands, but with the Hindus it is made doubly
tragical because of superstition and the endless ritual connected with
their religion. The idea of mourning is not so much sorrow as it is
uncleanness, defilement.

When death seems imminent the family priest is summoned to administer
the last sacrament. The dying person is lifted from the couch and laid
upon the ground, which has been made ceremonially pure by smearing it
with cowdung and by placing the sacred dharba grass upon it. It is said
that if a man dies upon a bed he must carry it through eternity. It is
most important that a man should breathe his last upon the earth, and
not within the house, as there are certain phases of the moon when it
would be a serious annoyance for all within the house to have a death
beneath the roof. In fact, it pollutes the whole neighbourhood to have a
death in the vicinity, and the neighbours share in the unclean state of
the family until the corpse is carried to the burning-ground. Often if a
death occurs in a house in an unpropitious phase of the moon, the
dwelling must be vacated until such time as the priest shall permit it
to be purified; sometimes the ban cast upon the place lasts from three
to six months.

The duration of the state of ceremonial impurity varies according to the
age of the deceased. In the case of mere infants the time is about one
day. In the case of a boy who has not been invested with the sacred
cord, or a girl not married, the time is three days; and after that, in
either case, the time is ten days. In the case of a married girl,
whether or not she has gone to live with her husband, her own people
must observe the ceremonial for three days. During these periods the
near relatives of the dead are unclean and their touch would defile any
person or thing. They must not enter their own kitchen nor touch any
cooking utensil. The food must be cooked by some one not personally
connected with the dead, but of equal caste. If for some reason the
mourning family cannot get any one of their own caste to cook for them,
they must procure kitchen utensils and cook their food in some place
other than the usual kitchen, not using the utensils again. If a person
in mourning went into a kitchen or storehouse, everything would have to
be thrown away immediately.

The wailing of the women tells the story of a death, as they abandon
themselves completely to their sorrow, tearing their hair, striking
their foreheads, and uttering shrill cries to show their desolation. As
soon as the breath leaves the body preparations are made at once for its
disposal, as a corpse is never kept longer than twenty-four hours in
this hot climate. The eldest son, if there is one of suitable age, or
the father or eldest brother in order of nearest relationship, or the
husband if the deceased is a woman, must conduct the funeral ceremonies.
The body is washed and shaven and adorned with the marks of his caste,
and placed in a sitting position, with the head uncovered, and the son
or heir performs a sacrifice before it. Then the two thumbs and the
great toes are tied together and the body is enveloped in a new white
cloth and placed upon a bier, formed of two long poles with seven
cross-pieces. With the heir at the head, carrying a pot of fire, the
procession starts for the burning-ground. This bier must always be
carried by relatives or members of the same caste. When a man is ill and
it is necessary to tell him that he will soon depart from this world, it
is broken to him gently by some one saying, “You will soon ascend a
palanquin carried by bearers of your own caste.” On the way to the
cemetery the procession is stopped three times and the bier placed on
the ground, the face uncovered, and a prayer is said. If, as sometimes
occurs, the person is not really dead and he revives, it is most
unfortunate for all concerned, the revived man included, as he is
considered as dead and not allowed to return to his home or to his
caste.

Arrival at the burning-ground, where the funeral pile has been prepared
by men whose profession it is to attend to the dead, and who are always
of the pariah class, the untouchables, the body is put on the pyre and
the sacred thread and loin-cloth are removed with the winding-sheet, as
the body must depart from the world in the state in which it entered it,
completely naked. The head should be placed towards the south and the
legs towards the north. If near a sacred river, like the Ganges, the
body is laid for a few moments with the feet in the sacred water, and
water is sprinkled over it. The heir performs the sacrifices, and it is
he who sets the pile alight, while the priests repeat the prayers for
the dead. After the pyre is lighted the family retire to a distance and
leave the body to the administrations of the men in charge. In some
places the heir is supposed to break the skull so that the gases may
escape and the body may not explode. I was told of one woman who wished
to establish her right to a rich man’s property; consequently at the
critical moment she dashed from the arms of her friends and with one
blow of a stick broke the head of her late liege lord, thus clearly
showing her heirship, as only the legal heir is entitled to perform this
last kind office for the dear departed.

I heard one rather peculiar story while in India in regard to the
cremation of the dead. I sat at dinner beside an English official who
had been many years in the Government service of India. In the course of
the conversation I asked him what he thought about cremation. He said,
with a smile: “Well, I am perhaps a little prejudiced in regard to the
cremation of the dead. I had rather a peculiar experience.” I settled
back in my chair, hoping I was to hear one of the many stories of Indian
life which these old officials have to tell us if they find we are
interested in the lives of the people amongst whom they work. He said:
“I had an acquaintance once, a Scotchman, who died here in India, and
asked in his will that I and another friend would cremate him, and not
allow an Indian hand to touch him, but that we should personally attend
to all the details. We were young then in things Indian, and made our
first mistake in buying the wood for the pyre. Unfortunately for our
friend, the wily wood-merchant sold us green wood, and for the first day
he only smoked. By the second day the wood had dried out, and all would
have been well if we had known that the skull of a person burned should
be broken in order to allow the gases to escape. We did not know
this—our friend blew up. We spent the remainder of the second day in
gathering his remains and replacing them upon the fire. The third day
the work was fully accomplished; his ashes were collected and now repose
in a beautiful urn in his family chapel near Edinburgh.”

Ceremonies are held and sacrifices are made for ten days by the members
of a family in which there has been a death. If the deceased was a
married man, it is on the tenth day that the widow is degraded into her
state of widowhood. This rite is called “the cutting of the cord,”
because then the tali, the symbol of wifehood, is cut, and the woman has
no more place in Hindu society. The relatives and friends come to the
house and deck the poor woman in all her festive clothing; jewels are
put upon her, flowers, and sandal paste. Her friends mourn with her for
a time, then her bright clothing is removed, her beautiful black hair is
cut, and she must remain for ever close-shaven and clothed in a garment
of white. She may attend no feast, is permitted to eat only one meal a
day, and that should be prepared by her own hands, may not partake of
meat, and if she is so unfortunate as to be poor in this world’s goods
she becomes the drudge and servant of her husband’s family. She is
considered unclean, a thing of ill-omen, so unlucky that if a man were
starting on some business venture and on leaving his doorway should by
chance meet a widow he would return to his house and say a few prayers
to counteract his bad luck.

[Illustration:

  INDIAN WOMEN SPINNING.

  To face p. 148.]

When the widow is a child, not yet arrived at the age of living with her
husband, the only ceremony at the death is the cutting of the tali cord.
The other ceremonies and degradations are reserved for the time when she
arrives at the full age of wifehood, when the whole ceremony is enacted
as though the wife had been a real wife, and the little girl-widow is
compelled to join that great army of women in India, nearly twenty
million strong, of whom a million are child-widows.

I met a great many widows in India, and even among the Brahmo Samaj,
which sect is now trying to break the tyrannical yoke of custom, I never
heard of one who dared to brave public opinion and remarry. I knew one
charming widow—I think the most beautiful woman I saw in India—who had
practically broken all class restrictions except this last. It was said
that she had been in love with a man for many years, and he had
repeatedly tried to persuade her to undergo the censure of her people by
marrying him, but she dared not do it. She was only thirty years old,
but she must remain until the end of her life a widow, almost an
outcast.

In the cities and among the modernized people of India this state does
not hold such sorrow for women as in the villages and country districts,
where the people have not come into contact with Western civilization.
In these purely Hindu towns, where all social life is controlled by
custom and the influences of superstition and religion, when the woman
can no longer wear the red mark of wifehood upon her forehead, her case
is pitiable.

The Indian Government has made laws legalizing the remarriage of widows,
but even when it has the Government sanction, custom and tradition are
too strong, and practically no woman will take advantage of it. It would
mean not only lifelong disgrace for her, but also would reflect so
severely upon her relatives and the members of her caste that they would
be involved in endless disgrace.

There are many homes scattered throughout India for these helpless
women. Pundita Ramabai has a place near Poona where she has nearly eight
hundred widows in her charge, and they are a sad sight as they go in
squads of from two to three hundred to their work at the printing press
or at the looms attached to the mission. Some widows had been with her
for years, and quite likely will remain for life, as no one will marry a
widow, and they do not seem to be acquiring a practical education with
which they could earn their living in the world. The Gaekwar of Baroda
is solving the widow question by educating them as teachers at the
Government expense, only asking that in return for his care they devote
a certain number of years as school-teachers in his State.

Pundita Ramabai’s home for widows is a very remarkable institution, and
well repays one for a visit. It is a faith mission—that is, its members
do not receive a salary, but depend upon donations for their support.
What remains after the expenses of the establishment have been met is
divided among the workers according to their needs. They are a very
devoted band, with an orthodox, old-fashioned brand of religion that
holds the wrath of God and the terrors of hell over these emotional
women, whose only outlet for their emotions is their prayers, and at
noon they are permitted to pray aloud and express their desires and
their states of feeling. One day we heard a great buzzing, sounding from
the distance like an immense swarm of bees, and found it was the 1,350
widows, rescued street women, and children having their noonday prayer.
Some of them worked themselves into a veritable ecstasy of religious
emotion, swaying their bodies, the tears running down their faces as
they prayed for the forgiveness of their sins, real or imaginary.

The business manager was more interested in the practical than the
religious aspects of the mission, and looked at the whole question with
the eye of the man who has to provide for all these people who give
nothing to the common good. When asked the outcome of it all, he said he
could not see what good was being accomplished except in the actual
saving of the lives. They could not marry, they could not support
themselves, they were helpless, and would be a burden on others’
shoulders so long as they lived. He said: “Now look! There go four
hundred women who should be married to-morrow; but who will marry them?
No Hindu would dare break his caste by marrying one of them. It would
completely ostracize him from his community. And again, we would not
want to marry a Christian girl to a Hindu or a Mohammedan.”

I asked: “Are there no Christian boys to marry them?”

He replied: “There are not enough to go around, and even a Christian
does not marry a widow.”

“Do you ever have any offers?” I asked.

He laughed. “Yes, once in a while some man takes courage and comes here
to find a wife, but he generally goes away without one. We seem here
rather to go on the principle of getting rid of the speckled apples
first, and if there is a girl with a hare lip, or only one eye, she is
the one trotted out for inspection. Naturally, the boy beats a hasty
retreat, saying he believes he does not want to get married to-day.”

The lot of the widowed woman in India is not so pitiable if she has been
so fortunate as to have borne sons. In India, as in all Eastern
countries, filial piety, the respect for parents, is bred into the very
fibre of the man’s soul. When the mother becomes a widow and dons the
gown of white, her son cares for her and cherishes her all her days. She
is still the ruler of his household, and it would be a most unfilial
son, on whom his world would soon cry shame, if he did not ask the
advice of his mother on matters of importance, nor heed her warnings in
times of stress. Her whole life is given for others, as this world is
supposed to have no joys for her except the joy of service. For her
“this world is but a dream: God alone is real”; and her days are passed
in caring for the many lives around her and in prayers and religious
rites that will help her to more swiftly pass the time ere she may join
her lost one. The woman of India who has lost her mate turns
instinctively to the gods for solace, because she has been taught from
childhood that “the religion of the wife lies in serving her husband:
the religion of the widow lies in serving God.”




                               CHAPTER X
                   HYDERABAD AND THE MOHAMMEDAN WOMAN


The city of Hyderabad seems to have been dropped to the earth from an
Oriental dream. It is the most Eastern city in this most Eastern land,
and you are filled with a sense that it is not at all real, but
especially staged and set for your amusement, and when you leave, it
will all disappear. The gaily painted shops will be pulled down and put
in the property-room, the goldsmiths who make the bracelets, nose-rings,
and necklaces for the pretty, dark-eyed women within the zenanas is only
waiting for his cue to leave the stage. The men on the corners with
their great wreaths of white flowers, with their marigolds and garlands
to be hung about the necks of friends, or to curtain the doorways at
some feast or wedding, are there only for show, to add colour to the
picture. These women passing by with saris of purple or crimson, with
gleaming bracelets and tinkling anklets, with kohl-blackened eyes that
stare at you wonderingly from above the closely drawn sari, or, what is
more peculiar to visitors from the West, the women draped in long white
cloaks like winding-sheets, which cover them completely from the view of
the passer-by, seem part of the chorus; and the sheen of knives and guns
and huge silver chains hanging over the shoulder of the man from the
North, the elephant swaying slowly down the street, looking with keen,
twinkling eyes at the people who make way for him, are all a part of the
pantomime, or a mirage caused by the brilliant sunshine of this
Southland.

[Illustration:

  A CARRIAGE FOR WOMEN.

  To face p. 154.]

We are told that Hyderabad is the oldest and greatest native State in
the Indian Empire, and we have heard from childhood of the magnificence
of the Nizam of Hyderabad, the man who seemed to outrival Solomon with
his palaces, his jewels, and his wives. His hospitality was given with
Oriental lavishness. Those who were fortunate enough to be his guests at
the great Durbar at Delhi, when King George was proclaimed Emperor of
India, will never forget the gorgeousness and prodigality of his
entertainment. For sixteen months he had an army of workmen clearing the
ground, making the lawns and flower-gardens, and erecting the tents that
were to accommodate his guests and the four thousand people he took with
him from Hyderabad. His women were lodged in an old palace at a distance
from the tents of the guests and were unseen, viewing the spectacle from
afar.

Even those of the immediate circle surrounding the Nizam at Hyderabad
knew nothing of his private life within the zenana, and only conjectures
were made in regard to the number of women within its walls. Gossip says
that when the late Nizam died there was a cartload of broken glass
bracelets (the bangles that are worn by wives, but that are broken on
their wrists when they become widows) taken away from the palace. This
fortunate man was credited with a great many more wives than he actually
possessed. Hyderabad is a feudal country, with many of the customs that
prevailed in France under the old feudal régime. The Nizam is the
overlord. His feudal princes when possessing a pretty daughter are
always anxious to give her as wife to the Nizam. He perhaps may accept
her and send her to his women’s quarters, never seeing her again. But
her people are satisfied, as they have the honour of having a daughter
in the Imperial zenana, consequently a friend at Court, as she will
naturally remember her family when Imperial offices or gifts are being
distributed. She receives a stated income, said to range from sixty
dollars to four hundred dollars a month, according to her status, number
of children, etc.

The Nizam was planning to give his first ball while I was in Hyderabad,
and every one was on the _qui vive_ regarding those who should be asked
and those who should not. It is remarkable how everything seems to
revolve around the ruler of one of these principalities. His Highness is
an absolute autocrat concerning the life and actions of his people, and
the foreigners seem to have caught the infection, because in every State
we visited the name of the ruler was on all tongues. “His Highness
thinks so and so,” or “His Highness does not think so and so,” was the
ultimate, final word for everything. His greatness and his Oriental
splendour seem to overpower the people and make them subservient. Yet it
is not from any personal contact, as few of even the Nizam’s ministers
have seen him, and his people never have that honour, unless at some
great Durbar, where, arrayed in royal magnificence, he permits them to
view him upon his throne, or when, as he is being swiftly whirled along
in his motor, four shrill blasts from the whistles of the police notify
the populace that their ruler is passing.

A native ruler seems to attract a genuine admiration and respect from
his subjects. He appeals to their instincts with his display. They love
to hear the glories of his magnificence, to see his elephants, his
guards, and his foreign motors. He can understand his people and his
people understand him; and even if the taxes are oppressive and he
grinds the faces of the people into the dust to get money to squander
upon his favourites and to build great palaces, the peasant will bear it
all and not complain, as he feels it is ordained, and his Rajah is the
child of the gods and entitled to his very life.

There is no fear in the State of Hyderabad that the present race of
rulers will become extinct. When a child is born to the Nizam there is a
public holiday in the State, the schools are closed, cannon are fired,
and every one is supposed to rejoice with the happy father. While we
were there the people enjoyed four public holidays within eight days
arising from this fact, and nine more were expected the following week.

While we were in this State there arose a case that was causing a great
deal of comment. The son of a woman was killed and the murderer was
condemned to death. In this Mohammedan country the law “a life for a
life” prevails, and the death penalty cannot be revoked unless the heir
of the dead man demands it. In some Hindu communities, where the saving
of life is a meritorious performance, the village or city will often
raise a certain sum and offer it to the heir in exchange for the life of
the condemned prisoner. Men, I was told, will sometimes take the money,
but women, especially if it was their son or husband who was killed,
will practically always demand the life. In this instance the woman, who
was a devout Mohammedan, took the money and sent it to help her
fellow-Mohammedans in their war with the infidel Italians. Her religious
zeal overcame the instinct for revenge, so deeply planted within the
breast of all followers of the Arabian prophet.

At tea at the home of a Mohammedan I met several ladies, who willingly
discussed with me the difference between the social customs of our
Western land and those governing the life of the woman of the East. I
was told that there is no society life as we know it, no calling, nor
promiscuous making of new acquaintances. The social life centres around
the three great events of Indian life—births, weddings, and deaths. If a
wedding occurs in a family, the mother will send invitations to all the
ladies of the same social standing as herself, and, dressed in their
most gorgeous saris and jewels, they come to the house, where elaborate
refreshments are served with much gossiping and merry-making. The guests
stay hours or days, according to their relationship to the family. Also
at times of death they go and offer their condolences to the bereaved
family, and although colours are much more subdued at the time of sorrow
than at the time of rejoicing, it is often another place in which to
show off new finery. These secluded women feel like the little girl who
stopped to see a friend on her way to a funeral. She was dressed in a
bright pink sari, and when remonstrated with on wearing such a gay dress
on such a mournful occasion, said, “Why, how can I be sure that I will
get another chance to show it.”

I said to my hostess in the course of the conversation: “If I were a
Mohammedan or a Hindu lady and came here to live, would the ladies whose
husbands perhaps had business associations with my husband come to call
upon me?” She said: “No, not at all. You would never meet the ladies
unless at the time of some festivity you were invited.” I asked the
reason for this, and they answered, “Custom”—the word that rules the
whole Eastern world. This lack of exchange of courtesies between new
people is traced in some cases to the attitude of the husbands, who seem
afraid to allow their wives to make new acquaintances. They must decide
whom the wife shall visit. They must know that the house visited is
strictly secluded, that the hostess has no advanced ideas, and that the
husband is a man of standing before they allow their women to make new
friends. They say that it is the desire of protection, not deprivation
of liberty, that causes them to take such care of their dear ones.

An Englishwoman ten years ago tried to meet the Indian ladies, and sent
sixty invitations for a tea. Only three of the invited guests put in an
appearance. She persisted, convinced the husbands that no male eyes
would gaze upon their secluded treasures, and now the original sixty
have come with nearly every high-class lady in Hyderabad, so that on her
reception days the house is crowded.

There is a club where the Mohammedan and Hindu ladies meet once a month
and play badminton, and eat much cake and gossip. Still, they are not as
yet taking any active interest in social work, nor in what is going on
in the world outside. Mme. Sarojinni Naidu, the Indian poetess whose
charming poems have been so well received in England, and who is herself
a social favourite in that country, has been trying to interest the
ladies of Hyderabad in social work among women. She has been specially
interested in reviving the old industry of silk-weaving, and the weavers
through her efforts have been encouraged to do their best work. She has
sold thousands of rupees worth of the beautiful silks to her friends
within the zenanas, but it is rather discouraging work, as it has caused
her to be looked upon with suspicion by many of the officials, who fear
that she may be using her influence with the people for some Socialistic
movement.

While in Hyderabad I saw a great deal of this wonderfully attractive
woman, who looks like a young girl, but who is the mother of children
nearly as big as herself. She herself is not “purdah,” and she has
violated the customs of her caste by marrying a man of another caste.
She goes to public entertainments and lives the life of an Englishwoman.
I went with her to see the “sports,” that form of entertainment which
always follow the English wherever they go. They were held at the race
track, and in the grand stand were the entire foreign community, with a
mixture of Indian gentlemen. We watched the riders in the field below,
and I must confess the Indian gentlemen easily carried the honours. They
are wonderful horsemen, and are most picturesque. I think there is no
handsomer man in the world than the high-class Indian gentleman. With
his clear brown skin, his large black eyes, his stately carriage, and
magnificent physique, accentuated by the pugaree or turban on his head,
he is a picture that, once seen, cannot easily be forgotten. The average
Englishman looks either too fat or too thin, does not hold himself well,
has generally, if a resident in the East, a most unhealthy complexion,
and in comparison with his Indian neighbour makes a very poor showing.

Mme. Naidu was the only Indian woman in the grand stand, and after tea
was served, she asked me if I would like to visit the Indian women. We
went upstairs to an enclosed room, which was filled with Indian ladies,
who could see all that was going on in the grounds below, but were
protected from view by the carved woodwork enclosing the room. They came
to a side entrance in their carriages or motors; a screen of canvas was
made from their carriage to the entrance so that they could pass
immediately from their carriage to a covered stairway, themselves
unseen.

There were about twenty ladies, dressed in most brilliant colours and
decked with an immense amount of jewellery. One woman had seven
piercings in her ears, in four of which were set small buttons of
turquoises, and in the others great hoops of gold in which were hanging
pearls about the size of a pea. In her right nostril was a diamond and
in her left a ruby. Her arms were covered with bracelets, and there were
five necklaces of diamonds around her neck. Her trousers, the ugly
trousers of the Mohammedan lady, were of bright pink brocade, the tunic
was of white, and over it all was a long veil of light blue gauze. One
would imagine a glaring clash of colours, but all this riot of colour
blends and makes the right setting for the dark beauty of these Indian
women. They are extremely pretty, with the colouring of an Italian or
Spaniard from the South; their big black eyes are shaded by long silky
lashes, their noses are most delicate, and they have exquisitely shaped
mouths. I do not think that I saw an ugly woman all the time I was
visiting the “purdah” women of India. Some of them with age become a
little too stout, but their dress disguises the figure if too well
blessed with flesh, and softens harsh outlines if too thin.

The women in this secluded enclosure seemed to be enjoying themselves
much more than the conventional Englishwomen below them. There was a
table with a varied assortment of non-alcoholic drinks, and many kinds
of cakes and sweets. Each lady had her silver pan-box, and made pan for
her friends, all chatting and laughing with the utmost freedom and
good-fellowship. They do not seem to feel it a deprivation at all to be
compelled to pass their lives with women. I am sure they would feel very
ill at ease if they thought that they could be seen by any man except
their husband, brother, or immediate relative.

I had an example of what instinct will do in the fear of being seen by
some one outside of the family circle. Mme. Naidu and I called upon a
Mohammedan lady who was strictly “purdah.” We were taken into a
drawing-room furnished in European fashion, where the father-in-law of
our hostess was chatting with another gentleman. The stranger left
immediately, but the father-in-law remained to talk with me while Mme.
Naidu went in search of the mistress of the house. She returned soon,
and said to the man, “You must leave,” and after his departure the lady
entered. When she sat down she noticed that one of the blinds of the
window was open, and she drew her sari across her face and spoke to Mme.
Naidu, who went to the window and closed the blind. Even that did not
satisfy her, and a servant was called, who saw that all the windows were
securely closed and that no one could possibly look into the room from
the outside. It seemed a useless precaution to me, as the windows opened
on to a garden, and no one could pass unless some member of the
household. She laughed apologetically and said: “I know what you think,
but I cannot sit here with any degree of comfort if I think some one, a
servant or one of my husband’s guests, might pass by. It is instinct; my
mother and my mother’s mother were ‘purdah’ women, and it is in the
blood.”

She asked us to come to her rooms and look at some new clothing. Her
rooms were big and rather bare, as are most rooms in this hot country,
but the furniture was all European. Bed, dressing-table, and chairs all
looked as if made in England or France. She had a servant bring her
pan-box. This giving of pan is the first thing offered to a guest on
arrival and the last thing on going away. Her pan-box was of silver,
about nine inches wide by twelve long. It had a shallow tray in the top,
in which was kept in tiny compartments the betel-nut and spices. In the
bottom of the box, covered with a damp cloth, were the leaves. The
hostess takes a leaf, covers it with a thin layer of lime, and with a
pair of scissors breaks a betel-nut into small pieces, puts it with half
a dozen different spices into the leaf, folds it up, sticking a clove
through the leaf as a fastener, and hands it to the guest. The guest
removes the clove and places the leaf in the mouth, where it makes a
huge bunch on the side of the face until it is slowly masticated. It
gives forth a juice which colours the inside of the mouth and the teeth
a dark red, but not permanently, as it rinses quite easily. The pan has
a spicy taste, and leaves the mouth feeling deliciously clean, I presume
owing to the lime in it. Many of the great houses have a servant or
slave whose only duty is to make pan for the inmates of the zenana. One
such servant said she made five hundred a day and her wrist became quite
lame from time to time caused by cutting the betel-nut.

Our hostess had a box of clothing put in front of her on the floor, and
she showed us a beautiful collection of saris of woven gold cloth made
in Benares, long tunics of embroidered chiffon-like gauze, and trousers
of heavy gold and silver goods, almost like tapestry.

I asked them to tell me the duties of a high-class lady of Hyderabad.
Mme. Naidu laughed and said—

“About eight o’clock in the morning my lady yawns, and a slave-girl will
say, ‘Will not the Begum rise?’ and the Begum will slowly get out of bed
and allow her slave to brush her teeth with powdered charcoal and wash
her face and hands. Then she would sit down upon a mat and have her hair
dressed, while other slaves came in with articles of dress or of the
toilet. Soon the other women of the household would join her, and they
would chew betel-nut and talk and gossip until about ten o’clock, when a
large tray would be brought in with breakfast, consisting of rice and
curry and sweets. After breakfast, more friends or relatives come in,
and the sewing women and higher servants, and they all talk and laugh
together. In the afternoon the silk merchants may send their wares or
the jewellers their bracelets and rings and precious stones, which are
brought into the zenana by women. These shopwomen are great gossips, and
tell all the news from other zenanas—who is engaged and who married and
what presents were given, etc. The women shop and haggle, and perhaps
buy and perhaps do not, and by the time the merchants leave it is time
to eat again. In the evening the husband or the sons visit the women’s
quarters and brings the Begum the news of the world of men outside, and
then it is time to sleep again.”

A great many women—nearly all Indian women, in fact—attend personally to
their households. For instance, I went with one of my friends, who
belonged to a very rich and powerful family, to call upon her mother,
and found her and her daughter-in-law sitting in the courtyard preparing
the vegetables for dinner. All ladies know how to cook, and think it no
disgrace to prepare the dinner with their own hands. If a guest is to be
especially honoured, the mother or wife will prepare the meal for him.
In a Hindu community, where the food must be cooked by a person of their
own or a higher caste, where no one of a lower caste is even allowed to
look into the kitchen, it might cause great annoyance if the women of
the household did not know how to cook, as even in India the mistress
has the servant question with which to contend from time to time.

In these old families in Hyderabad there are a great many people under
the one roof. The patriarchal family life prevails—that is, the sons
bring their wives to their father’s home, and a large house shelters
many families. The mother is the head of the women’s quarters and her
word is law. Innumerable servants and poor relations are ever present,
and to our Western eyes disorder and chaos seem to reign. There are some
old families in this city that keep up the state of princes or petty
kings. There is one great lady who is surrounded by a bodyguard of
amazons, women dressed as soldiers, who salute and present arms with
military precision when her courtyard is entered by a visitor.

We went from the house of our young hostess, loaded down with pan and
fruit, to the home of a colonel in the Nizam’s bodyguard. His wife is
“purdah,” but his daughter is allowed to be seen in public. In the
drawing-room was a man tuning the piano, and Mme. Naidu said to the
daughter, “Your mother cannot come here. There is a man.” The daughter
replied: “Oh, it is all right, he is blind.” The mother had travelled
extensively in Europe, Egypt, and Turkey. While abroad she went about
freely as any European, only becoming the secluded Indian wife while in
her own country. Her daughter was to be married and she showed me the
clothes for the trousseau. There were about fifty complete outfits, made
of gorgeous Benares cloth, heavy with gold. This clothing lasts a
lifetime, and is handed down from daughter to daughter, as styles do not
radically change. The mother told me that the custom of giving so much
clothing is dying out, and money is given instead, allowing the daughter
to buy from time to time, according to her fancy.

While we were talking the husband came in. He was dressed in English
riding clothes, and was a very up-to-date man-of-the-world. The moment
he entered, the mother and daughter, who up to this time had been
chatting affably and freely, became silent. They virtually did not speak
a word while he was in the room, but became at once true Indian women,
silent before that superior being—the man.




                               CHAPTER XI
                    MOHAMMEDANISM WITHIN THE ZENANA


We are often told that Mohammedan women are not religious, that they
leave all devotional exercises for their lords and masters, who are
accountable to Allah for their salvation, and to whom they must look for
permission to enter the abode of the blessed. It is a fact that the
women followers of the Arabian prophet are not seen in the mosques,
because no Mohammedan woman appears in a public place where she may come
in contact with the other sex. Mohammed discouraged the worship of women
in public by saying, “The presence of women in the mosques inspires men
with feelings other than those purely devotional.”

[Illustration:

  MOHAMMEDAN WOMEN, HYDERABAD.

  To face p. 170.]

Although restricted to the home in which to say her prayers, the
Mohammedan woman is very religious, and often more narrow and bigoted
than her husband, who has the opportunity of broadening his religious
views by contact with those of other faiths. The Mohammedan religion,
like those of Western lands, has its divisions and subdivisions,
differing from each other on the subject of ritualism and the different
interpretations of the Koran. The two most important branches of El
Islam are the Shiahs and the Sunnis. At the death of the prophet, Abu
Bekr was elected to take his place—wrongfully, as many believe. They
feel that the mantle of prophethood should have fallen upon the
shoulders of his son-in-law, Ali, who was one of his first disciples and
his cousin. The coterie who adhered to the election of the caliph
instead of the hereditary descent are called the Sunnis. All of the
Egyptians, the Turks, and many Indians are followers of this party.
Those who think that Ali was deprived of his just rights are called the
Shiahs; the Persians, many Arabs, and a few Indians compose the main
body of this division. Ali was finally made caliph, but was murdered,
the caliphate passing out of his family instead of descending to his
grandsons, Hossain and Hassan, who rebelled against the ruling caliph
and were killed in battle. They are considered the great martyrs of the
Mohammedan faith, and their deaths are mourned annually by the Shiahs.

We were in Hyderabad, the great Mohammedan State of India, at the time
of mourning, and I was fortunate enough to be asked to a “mourning
party,” given by the women of one of the old Mohammedan families. It was
most exceptional, as outsiders are never asked to these homes during
this time of religious emotion. Even their Sunni friends and their
acquaintances in the Hindu faith, know that intruders are not looked
upon kindly during the days set apart for sorrow.

We arrived at the home, which was surrounded by a great wall, in which
was a massive wooden door studded with iron nails. In the olden time
these homes were used as fortresses, and were made strong enough to
repel an invasion by the enemy. Within an embrasure by the side of the
gate was a man on guard, with a gun beside him. It is true that the gun
was of an obsolete pattern, that would quite likely do the user more
damage than any one else, if the guard had been called upon to act, but
it looked picturesque. The guard immediately turned his back when he saw
that the carriage contained ladies, and our servant went ahead to see
that all men-servants were out of sight before my Mohammedan friends
would enter the courtyard. We drove into what seemed an immense
stable-yard. Bullocks were standing by the side of great lumbering
carts, horses were in their stalls, and stable accessories were
scattered about in great disorder. A curtain was raised by a
woman-servant, disclosing a short stone stairway, ascending which we
found ourselves in the women’s quarters. It was a courtyard, with rooms
opening upon it from the four sides. These rooms were more like large
alcoves, being separated from the court only by arches.

At one end was a large room, where about sixty ladies were sitting on
the floor in front of a strip of white cloth, that served as table and
tablecloth combined. They were seated on the three sides of the room,
leaving the open space in the middle for the servants to pass while
serving the food. We left our shoes at the entrance and were taken to a
servant, who poured water over our hands from a brass ewer, allowing it
to fall into a basin in which was some finely chopped straw to conceal
the water. Our hostess seated us opposite her, and an old servant dipped
from a central bowl of rice a generous helping for me, and then various
curries, unknown to me, were passed. I watched my friend, and took from
the dishes she favoured, mixing it with the rice upon my plate, making
rather a sticky mess, that was conveyed to my mouth with difficulty.
Eating with the fingers is not so easy as it may appear to a casual
observer, but evidently practice makes perfect, because all seemed most
adept, using only the thumb and three fingers of the right hand. No food
must be touched with the left hand, as it is, religiously, unclean.

After my feet had so thoroughly gone to sleep that they ceased from
paining me, I took the opportunity of looking around and trying to
become acquainted with my neighbours. The ladies wore no jewellery, and
their dresses were supposed to be of a subdued hue, yet every colour of
the rainbow was represented except red, which is the colour of joy and
associated with festive occasions. The Mohammedan dress is not so
graceful as is the Indian sari. The women wear a pair of tight trousers,
made of satin, silk, or brocade, coming to the tops of their embroidered
slippers. Over the chest is a small sleeveless jacket, then a tunic of
white or embroidered gauze, and over all a chiffon-like drapery which is
drawn over the head. All of these outer draperies were of so diaphanous
a material that they did not disguise the outlines of the figure.

Down the centre of the strips of cloth which served as table were great
dishes of rice and sweets, many curries, fruits, and an elaborate
assortment of cakes. Servants were everywhere, and it was hard for a
stranger to distinguish between some of the servants and their
mistresses, as many of the former were very well dressed and covered
with jewellery. They wore bracelets, anklets, nose-rings, ear-rings, and
necklaces, mainly of silver or glass; but one often saw the glint of
gold upon the neck of a serving-woman, and found she was the personal
slave of some member of the family.

Slavery exists still in Hyderabad, although in a modified form. No
person of good family would think of selling a slave, and the slaves
themselves feel the honour of belonging to one of the old families. In a
quarrel with a servant a slave will draw herself up proudly and say,
“You are only a servant—_I_ belong to the family.” Both servants and
slaves are treated with a familiarity unknown in the West. They take
part in the conversation, enter the rooms without knocking—in fact, I
don’t believe there is such a thing as a locked door in all India—and
talk to the mistress on terms of equality. While at dinner a small boy,
very prettily dressed, came to the hostess and snuggled his head against
her, while he stared at the peculiar-looking foreign woman opposite. I
asked if he was her son. She turned his face up to study it more
carefully, then said, “No; he is the son of one of my sister’s slaves.”

Resisting all the importunities of my hostess to have my plate refilled
with the curry and rice, we rose and went again to the servants in
charge of the ewer and basin, and our hands were washed. We then
adjourned to a courtyard, where many of the guests had preceded us.
There appears to be no etiquette in regard to leaving the table; when a
guest has eaten her dinner she rises and leaves, not asking to be
excused, nor feeling that it is necessary to wait for her hostess.

The ladies were sitting on the floor of the alcoves in groups of six or
seven, and pan boxes were much in evidence. Our hostess went into the
open courtyard and mounted a low, square table, over which was thrown a
rug. We sat down opposite her and she proceeded to make pan for us, and
we remained there for perhaps half an hour, waiting for the servants to
finish their dinner. There were at least fifty servants and slaves, all
running around aimlessly, doing whatever they found to do at the time,
with what seemed no system nor order governing their work. The mistress
had rather a shrill voice, and her orders could be heard very distinctly
as she called to some one in another part of the court. I asked my
friend if Indian ladies generally had such loud voices and commanding
tones, and she laughed and said: “Well, if they have not to begin with
they soon acquire them, as they must be heard above the confusion always
reigning in one of these great houses, where there are innumerable
servants, slaves, and poor relations. It takes a strong-minded woman,
and one with no mean executive ability, to keep peace and harmony in an
Eastern zenana.”

After every one had gossiped to her heart’s content, we went to a large
room at the end of the courtyard, which was fitted up as a chapel. In
front of an altar were three pieces of wood wreathed with flowers to
represent the tombs of Ali, Hossain, and Hassan. Facing the tombs were
ten girls, and the guests grouped themselves around them on the floor.
When we were all seated they began to chant. One would sing a line, then
the rest would join their voices and sing four or five lines; then a
short pause, and the leader would again start the chant. The listeners
were absolutely quiet, and the music rose and fell in weird, minor
strains that sounded tragic even to ears that could not understand the
words. The whole story of the slaying of the martyrs was told, and this
recital of their passion play moved the hearers deeply. From one part of
the room I heard a sob, then from another, and soon there was not a dry
eye in the place. At a certain strain in the music all rose, preceded by
the women carrying the miniature tombs, and marched slowly into an outer
courtyard, where incense was waved over the flower-wreathed pieces of
wood, after which a return was made to the room and the chanting
commenced again. We did not sit down, and the most dramatic part of the
performance began. All stood and beat their breasts in time with the
music, and, as chorus to the verses, would cry, “Hossain, Hassan!
Hossain, Hassan!” The servants beat their breasts so severely that it
seemed they would seriously hurt themselves, and it is considered a
great mark of piety to severely chastise themselves at this time, but
the ladies were more conservative and kept time with light taps.

This continued, with slight intermissions, for half an hour, some
sobbing, others crying quietly. At the end each one dropped to her knees
with her face towards Mecca, and from outside the wall the voice of a
man from the mosque chanted a benediction. It was most exquisitely sung,
and added the final touch to a weirdly beautiful scene—the moon shining
down into the courtyard, the flickering lights before the tiny
flower-wreathed tombs, the dark-faced women in their pretty gowns, with
the tears glistening on their eyelashes, kneeling, while the unseen
voice cried softly, “Salaam! Peace be with you! There is no God but
God.”

[Illustration:

  HUSKING RICE IN A BURMESE VILLAGE.

  To face p. 179.]




                              CHAPTER XII
                                 BURMAH


Passing from India to Burmah is in many ways like going from darkness to
sunlight, from tears to gaiety. India is a land of tragedy; Burmah is a
land of comedy. In India you see faces sad, worried, harassed, and life
seems a bitter struggle for the great masses in their endeavour to keep
the hungry wolf from the door. But in Burmah you are greeted with
smiles, no one is serious, and no one except the Chinese seem to be
really working. The women in the little booths within the bazaars,
smoking their long cheroots, gossiping with their neighbours, and
flirting with the youth passing by, give one the impression that it is
not business in which they are interested, but that they are there for
their amusement and to pass a few hours with their friends.

The dress also shows the difference in the temperaments of the people.
In India the women’s saris are made of dark reds, dark blues, and heavy
purples. In Burmah the colours are light and gay; you rarely see a
darkly clad person. The long piece of silk wound tightly around the
woman’s body is always of light blue, or pink, or yellow, or else a gay
check composed of all three colours. The loose cotton or linen jacket is
spotlessly white, and around the neck is thrown carelessly a piece of
silk or a handkerchief of contrasting colour to the skirt. The hair, of
ebony blackness, is well oiled and twisted high upon the head and twined
with flowers. Their toes are tucked into small heelless slippers, which
take a certain amount of dexterity to keep in place; but all young girls
learn early in life to give that flirtatious outward jerk of the heels
which keep the slipper from falling, and also prevents the folds of the
skirt from opening in front. The city belle when she starts forth upon
the street has well powdered her nose and often touched her lips with
carmine, and goes forth boldly to claim the admiration of all, not like
the Indian woman, who is compelled to hide her charms behind the sari.

The man of Burmah also dresses in gaily coloured silks. He wears a long
silk cloth around his body, tucks it in with a twist in front, and the
remaining portion he allows to hang in folds or throws jauntily over his
shoulder. He wears a short white cotton jacket, over which another one
of darker cloth is worn for street wear. The old and wealthy when they
are paying visits of ceremony or going to worship at the pagoda wear
long white coats, closed only at the neck and reaching to the knee. Men
of all classes wear flowered silk handkerchiefs around their heads as
turbans, but when age comes these are exchanged for simple ones of white
muslin.

[Illustration:

  BURMESE GIRL.

  To face p. 180.]

The women of Burmah have unlimited freedom as compared with the women of
other Eastern countries. Unlike the women of India, China, or Egypt,
they may choose their own husbands and have a courtship such as we of
the Western world so thoroughly understand. From the time of the first
great event in a young girl’s life, the boring of her ears, which
announces to her world that she is no longer a child but a woman, until
her betrothal, the Burmese girl looks forward to the finding of a
husband as the one aim of her life. Until her ears are bored she is a
child and may run and play with her brothers upon the village street,
but finally the day arrives when her friends and relatives bring with
them the ear-borer and the soothsayer, and the frightened girl must pay
the price of gaining maidenhood. Her cries are drowned by the music and
the talk and laughter that seem so heartless; but the pain is soon over,
and she herself will make the hole larger by every means in her power,
because until the hole is large enough to receive the great round tube,
nearly half an inch in diameter, she does not feel that she is indeed a
woman. It is her initiation into womanhood, it corresponds to the
entrance into the monastery or the tattooing of his legs of her brother,
the sign that he is no longer a boy, but may sit with men and chew
betel-nut and discuss affairs of the world with wondrous wisdom.

After the ear-boring ceremony each man our maiden sees may be a possible
husband, and she copies the coquettish sway of the hips that is so
effective in her older sister as she walks down the street with mother,
aunt, or married friend, who carefully guards her from all improprieties
now that she has arrived at marriageable age.

When all these arts have had the desired effect and her roving eye has
alighted upon the man of her choice, the Burmese girl may have her days
of courtship. She can meet her sweetheart at pwés, those festive parties
that seem to occur every night in Burmah, at which she may have a stall
for selling tobacco, or long cheroots, or flowers. This keeping of a
stall is not lowering to a woman’s social status, and numbers of
well-to-do women set them up at all places where crowds are liable to
congregate. There may be a reason for this besides the economic one, as
it is said a stall or shop or booth within the bazaar is the quickest
way of attracting a desirable husband. In the smaller towns there is
scarcely a house where the women have not arranged a small shop for sale
of betel-nut, coco-nuts, little looking-glasses, toilet articles, or
cotton goods from Manchester. The profits of this little trade are given
as pin-money to the wife or daughters. The English say that the Burmese
woman is a better businessman than her husband, and that in driving a
sharp bargain her successes are far in advance of those of her less
aggressive husband.

[Illustration:

  DANCING AT A VILLAGE FESTIVAL, BURMAH.

  To face p. 183.]

Pagoda feasts offer exceptional opportunities for lovelorn swains, and
many young couples have found their future happiness when gazing into
Buddha’s eyes. Evening-time is courting-time in all the world,
especially in this country, which is too hot during the day to permit of
any useless expenditure of energy, even by an ardent lover. They also
say that the men of Burmah are influenced by the proverb that says: “In
the morning women are cross and peevish, in the middle of the day they
are testy and quarrelsome, but at night they are sweet and amiable.”

If the lover does not expect to meet his sweetheart at a festival or a
theatrical entertainment, he waits around until he thinks the old people
have retired for the night, and then with a friend or two as chaperons
he calls upon his adored one, and finds her with powdered face and
pretty dress awaiting him in the moonlit veranda. There is little
privacy in this courtship, because divisions between the rooms are often
only made of matting, and mothers in Burmah are proverbial for the
quickness of hearing when it concerns the courtship of their daughters.
There is no lovemaking as we know it—kissing, and holding of hands, and
embracing—which would be most shocking to the modest instincts of the
Burmese maiden. Yet love has signs, and finally father’s and mother’s
consent is asked, the dowry fixed, and the astrologer consulted, who
will tell them if a boy born on Monday and a girl on Wednesday may wed.
No matter how ardently the match is desired by the interested parties,
some unions, judged according to their birthdays, would be most unlucky.
For example:—

                       Friday’s daughter
                       Didn’t oughter
                   Marry with a Monday’s son;
                       Should she do it
                       Both will rue it,
                   Life’s last lap will soon be run.

Each day of the week is guarded by an animal, and it naturally follows
that if a man was born on a day that was ruled by a serpent and a woman
on a day ruled by a mongoose, the serpent’s deadly enemy, they would
surely not live happily together. But if the parent’s consent is given,
the combination of birthdays are lucky, the dowry is satisfactory to all
concerned, then the propitious day must be found from the horoscope for
the actual wedding to take place. During June, July, August, and
September, the Buddhist Lent, all marriages are barred to the strict
followers of Buddha, and it would be a very unregenerate son or daughter
who would shock his old father and mother by daring to ask to marry
during this time. Marriage is a very precarious proceeding, because if
it takes place in certain months the couple will be rich, in other
months they will always love each other, while there are unfortunate
months that bring sickness and death to those tempting Hymen at this
time. Nevertheless, notwithstanding all the obstacles that seem to be
placed in the way of marriage, there are few spinsters in Burmah, and
virtually every man over twenty years of age has a wife.

The marriage ceremony is a strictly civil affair, no religious rite
entering into the performance. The friends meet at the house of the
bride’s parents, where a great feast has been prepared at the expense of
the bridegroom’s father, and the eating and drinking and publicity of
the affair make the marriage as binding as are any marriages in Burmah.
Contrary to all Eastern usages, the young couple take up their abode
with the bride’s parents instead of going to the home of the groom’s
people, which is the custom in India, China, and Japan. If the home roof
is too small to shelter the new family, they may build a new home for
themselves. This is not an expensive affair, as the houses are extremely
simple. They are practically all of one story, because of the Burman’s
aversion to any one walking over his head. The house is built on posts,
thus raising the floor seven or eight feet from the ground, which is
very desirable in rainy weather. It consists of two or three rooms and
an open balcony, where the family may sit of an evening or where the
daughter of the house may receive her lover, and not interrupt the
slumbers of father and mother, who have spread their sleeping-mats upon
the floor of the main living-room.

In the rainy season the cooking is done in one of the rooms, but in the
long, dry months the yard at the back of the house serves as kitchen. In
the smaller towns the roofs are thatched with palm-leaves or with grass,
but in the cities the ugly iron roofs are now seen, with here and there
a more pretentious roof of tiling.

Moving is not a laborious process, as there is little necessary
furniture in a Burmese home. A few rush mats, which serve for beds, some
rugs and blankets for use when nights are cold, which during the day are
rolled up and placed in an unused corner of the room, a cooking-range,
which is simply a square box filled with earth on which the wood is
lighted, some earthen pots for making curries and the cooking of the
rice, a water-jar, ladles made of the half of a coconut placed on a
handle, the huge round lacquer tray, which serves as table, and the
bowls for the curries and deserts.

With nearly every house there is a small yard, in which are found
flowers if the wife is inclined to love the beautiful; but if she is
more practically inclined chickens hold sway within the small domain,
until the evil day arrives for them when they pass into the curry-pot.
The strict Buddhist does not utilize the eggs, believing that they hold
the germ of life which it would be sinful to destroy. These Burmese
roosters can take the place of clocks, as it is said that they crow
regularly four times a day—at sunrise, noon, sundown, and at midnight.
The story goes that in the olden time there was a great fire made of
books that contained unlawful teaching. Among these books were those of
a famous astrologer, and after the fire the cocks came and ate the
ashes, thus taking into their very being the knowledge of the stars and
the actions of the sun.

If the wife lives in the city, she does not have the weary task of
husking the rice, as it is bought ready for cooking, nor does she need
waste much thought in planning the menu for the day. The two meals are
practically the same—the plain boiled rice upon the table-tray, around
which sit the household, squatting upon their heels. No knives or forks
are needed, as each takes upon his plate from the central dish the rice,
pours over it curry, arranges on the top the vegetables and condiments
that he loves, and eats it with the forks with which Nature has provided
him—his fingers. The food is very good if too much dried fish, which is
a delicacy loved by Burmans, or garlic has not been incorporated in the
curries. Only water is drunk at mealtime. If the husband has acquired
the habit of tippling, which has come to Burmah with other foreign
customs, he must go to the shop where it is sold to indulge in what, to
every good householder, is still a thing of which to be ashamed.

After meals every one smokes—father, mother, and children. It is said
that baby learns while at his mother’s breast to take the long cigar
from between her lips and puff it between alternate draughts at Nature’s
font; but Burmese deny this most indignantly, and say that smoking is
forbidden the children until they have learned to walk. I can quite
believe this, because it would take a strong baby to manage the enormous
cheroot smoked by all Burmans, although they are so mild that they would
not affect the nerves even of a child. The cigar seen in the homes is
from six to eight inches in length and about an inch in diameter. It is
made of the pith of a plant mixed with chopped tobacco-leaves, wrapped
in the leaf of the teak-tree, the ends tucked in and tied by a piece of
red silk, where stiff pieces of pith keep the loose tobacco from the
mouth. It splutters and scatters its fine fire in all directions, and
cannot be smoked by an amateur without danger to himself and all about
him. These are often made within the home by the wife and daughters, yet
they may be seen in tiny booths at all festivities, where pretty girls
sell them to admiring swains who are too lazy to roll them for
themselves.

Chewing betel-nut is also indulged in by both man and wife, and the
stain it leaves upon the lips and tongue is not an addition to the
beauty of the mouth; yet it can be easily cleansed, as witness the
pretty teeth and rosy lips of the women one meets in the street. There
is no furniture to dust, few dishes to wash, and little clothing to be
sewn, and small care expended upon the children. Their daily bath
consists in throwing a few buckets of water over their naked bodies,
which they learn early to do for themselves, and often around a village
well the tiny babies, dressed in only an amulet string, may be seen with
coconut ladle throwing the cooling water over their bodies and shrieking
with delight. The children of the poor go naked until about eight or
nine years old, and those of the better class dress practically as do
their fathers and mothers while in the street, although, even in houses
of the rich, clothing is considered a useless luxury for the young.

The simple life leaves much time for the wife, which she employs in
gossiping with friends, in attending pagoda festivals and pwés until
that happy event arrives, the birth of the first child. From the moment
it is known that the wife is to become a mother she is the recipient of
much care and attention and presents from her family and from her
friends, and when she can say, “I am the mother of a son,” then, like
all Oriental women, she has attained the great crown of womanhood. But
because of the lack of medical skill in Burmah she has to face a most
dreadful ordeal. As soon as her child is born the mother is rubbed all
over with saffron, a fire lighted near her, and all the blankets that
can be begged or borrowed are heaped upon her. She is given a drink
prepared by the midwife for the purpose of making her perspire. This is
given her many times a day, and together with the large bricks that are
heated and wrapped in damp cloths and placed in her bed conspire to have
the desired effect, and the poor mother passes seven days in a Turkish
bath. Then on the seventh day, as a finish to this trying ordeal which
she has undergone, she is forced to go through a most elaborate steaming
process, and if this does not smother her completely, she is pronounced
well. The midwife receives her mats, her allotment of rice and her
shilling, and the woman returns to her household duties. In the larger
towns now the Burmese woman may call in the European-trained doctor, and
there are hospitals which answer the great need that the women have for
proper care at this critical time of their lives. Yet I am told that the
mortality at child-bearing is not so great as that in India and other
Eastern countries. The main effect upon the woman is to age her greatly;
at the birth of her first child she changes from the pretty girl-wife to
the middle-aged woman.

About two weeks after the birth of the child a great feast is given to
celebrate the naming of the new arrival, and on this day also the young
man’s head is washed for the first time. All the friends of the family
and the neighbours are invited, and they come, bringing presents with
them to help pay for the feast. The mother sits down with her child in
her arms, then some elder or relation of the parents suggests the name,
and everybody accepts it at once, whereupon all adjourn to the feast,
where they eat, chew betel, and smoke cheroots until nightfall. If the
people have sufficient means, there is a pwé, which lasts until morning.

It is a rule amongst families that a child’s name must begin with one of
the letters belonging to the day on which it was born, and they all
believe that the stars which were in evidence at the hour of birth
decide a man’s character. A man born on Monday will be jealous, on
Tuesday honest, on Wednesday bad-tempered, on Thursday quiet, on Friday
garrulous, on Saturday quarrelsome, and on Sunday stingy. Each day also
has a particular animal which represents it. Monday is represented by a
tiger, Tuesday, a lion, etc., and in temples one sees yellow and wax
candles made in the form of these animals, representing his birthday,
placed before the god by the man who wishes special benefits from lord
Buddha.

Swinging by a couple of ropes from the roof is a rude home-made basket,
which is used for baby’s cradle. Even this useful article of furniture
in which the Burmese baby passes his sleeping hours is subject to the
actions of belligerent spirits, and must be hung in such a manner as not
to tempt the nats to use it for a resting-place. Burmese mothers, like
mothers all over the world, croon lullabies to their babies as they
swing them back and forth while waiting for the sand-man to come. I give
a verse of one of the popular lullabies known generally to all babies in
Burmah—

                 Nasty, naughty, noisy baby,
                 If the cat won’t, nats will maybe
                 Come and pinch and punch and rend you—
                 If they do I won’t defend you.
                       Oh, now please,
                       Do not tease,
                       Do be good,
                       As babies should,
                 Just one tiny little while;
                 Try to sleep, or try to smile.

When the son is eight or nine years of age he goes as a matter of course
to the monastery school, which is open to all alike, the poor and rich,
and which is practically the only thing that the priests, which flood
this country, afford the people in return for the food which is placed
in their begging-bowls each day. Every Buddhist boy is taught to read
and write, and he learns many of the formulas connected with the tenets
of his religion and the stories relating to the existence and teachings
of Buddha. Until the English came, all little boys went to the monastery
schools, but now there are Government schools and Burmese laymen schools
and many private schools, to which the more advanced Burmans are sending
their sons; yet the schoolrooms in the monasteries are not vacant. The
young Burmese are not so forced by the economic conditions to acquire
the foreign education as is the Indian boy, where life is much more
difficult and the Government certificate simply a means to an
end—Government employment. Until lately it was not thought necessary to
educate the girls. To be pretty, to know how to take care of her
household, to smile sweetly, and be of a gay disposition were sufficient
for a woman; and as book knowledge would not help her in those
accomplishments, book knowledge was, therefore, dispensed with. But now
the larger towns provide educational facilities for girls, and in
Rangoon and Mandalay there are many private schools for the daughters of
the better class.

Until a Buddhist has entered the monastery, joining the noble order of
the yellow robe, if for no longer than a day, he is nothing more than a
mere animal. He has a name given him for worldly purposes, so has a dog,
a horse, or a cow; but until he has shown himself ready to leave the
world by retiring into the quiet and peace of the monasteries, he cannot
expect to reap the good that he has sown in the past life, nor would it
be possible for him to look forward to a happy future. At the beginning
of the Buddhist Lent, all Buddhist boys from the age of twelve to
fifteen don the yellow robe and carry the begging-bowl before the priest
on his daily rounds. On this most important day in his life his parents
give a feast, where the young novice, dressed in finest clothes, loaded
with all the family jewels, goes slowly through the village, preceded by
a band of music and his friends and relatives dressed in their gayest
clothing. He calls at the houses of his friends and pays respects to the
officials of his village. Returning to his home, he finds, seated upon a
raised daïs, several priests from the monastery to which he is soon to
retire. They hold before their faces the large lotus-leafed-shaped fans,
so as not to see the row of pretty women, dressed in their pinks and
blues and yellows, flowers in their hair, jewels and chains on necks,
and bracelets on arms, and pearl powder softening smiling faces. The
solemnity of the ceremony commences when the boy throws off his fine
clothing, and, binding a piece of white cloth around his loins, sits
down before the barber and permits that glory of his boyhood, his long
black hair, to be cut off close to his head. After he has been carefully
shaved, water is poured over his body, and, dressed again in his bright
clothing, he prostrates himself three times before the monks, begging in
Pali, which quite likely he does not understand, that he may be admitted
to the holy assembly. Then the yellow garments are given him, the
begging-bowl is hung around his neck, and he is formally a member of the
monastery. With the departure of the priests and the novice feasting
begins, which, according to many Burmese festivities, lasts until dawn.

[Illustration:

  A BUDDHIST SCHOOL, MANDALAY (SHOWING BEGGING-BOWL).

  To face p. 194.]

In many cases, if the boy is working and his services are needed, he
remains in the monastery only long enough to enable him to go once
around the village begging from door to door in the train of the
priests. Some stay seven days, some a fortnight, and others, if they are
able, remain throughout the four months of Lent. Of course many of them
enter the monastery for life, and there is no country in the world where
there are so many priests as in Burmah. The monasteries offer a refuge
for men in trouble, for those who desire to leave the cares of the world
and lead a life of meditation and repose. And it is said that this
departure from the world is made by many a man in this country, where
women are noted for the strength of their characters and the length of
their tongues.

The Burmese boy does not consider he has attained manhood until he has
been tattooed. When I was first in Burmah, being rather nearsighted, I
thought all Burmese men of the lower class wore short, dark, skin-tight
drawers, but when I became more courageous and examined them more
closely I found what I considered underclothing was the man’s own skin.
This had been tattooed from the waistline down to the kneecap with a
series of pictures so closely set together that they could not be
distinguished one from the other, and melted into a background of blue
and black, with here and there a softened red to accentuate the fading
colours of the darker dye. This is a sign of manhood, which, the Burmese
say, will probably not die out, because a Burman would be as ashamed to
have a spotless white skin without a mark of the tattooer’s needle as
would the American boy to find no manly hairs upon his chin at the age
when other boys begin to shave. And woe to the hapless youth if a
wind-blown paso should show the girl he was courting a white and
spotless leg; she would tell him that his place was in the women’s
quarters and offer him a woman’s dress! Each figure in this mosaic has a
meaning, and there are charms for protection of the body, for the
gaining of a loved one, thus assuring the wearer great riches, and,
mixed with these, are figures of all kinds—lizards, birds, and pictures
of the Buddha. Sometimes women who wish to ensnare the object of their
affection endure the pain of having a love charm tattooed upon the
tongue or upon the lips. Often a few round spots tattooed with the
prescribed formula repeated over it and placed between the eyes will be
enough to bring back a wandering lover to her side. If this is not
effectual or if the maiden sees herself drifting towards a lonely middle
age with no lover in her view, she cuts off the locks of hair hanging
over her ears, announcing to all the world that she is looking for a
lover. They say in Rangoon that if a woman is tattooed it means that she
desires an Englishman for her husband.

[Illustration:

  BURMESE BOY WITH TATTOOED LEGS.

  To face p. 196.]

In olden days Burmah shared with Japan in the number of its women given
in marriage _à la mode_ to men of alien races. Nearly every English
official and merchant had his house presided over by a little native
maiden. These arrangements were very happy and tragedies did not occur
until the Englishman, longing for home sights and sounds, and the
dignity of an English wife, went back home and returned to his station
with the woman of his choice. Then there was sorrow, and even the
English gold could not repay the little Burmese woman for the loss of
the love of the kindly, careless man who had been her master for the
many years. Often attempts were made to regain that master’s love, and
many a time the attempts succeeded, because in the formality and dignity
of his English home and the coldness of his English wife, the man
remembered the happy days and nights spent under the Burmese roof and
the pretty little Burmese girl who shyly slipped her hand in his and
called him master, lord of all her days and nights.

There is a story told of an English official in Upper Burmah who, when
time for leave of absence came, closed up his Burmese home, giving to
its little hostess money sufficient to make her rich for life. On his
return to Burmah he brought with him the girl from Devonshire to whom he
had been betrothed for many years. At dinner their first night soft
steps were heard upon the verandas, and curtains moved as if in the
swaying of an evening breeze, but nothing could be seen. The next
morning when starting for his office the frightened horse shied madly at
a little mound of silk lying by the side of the gateway. It was the
little Burmese wife, with a dagger through her heart. Pinned upon her
pretty dress was a letter for her lord, in which she said: “I have
looked upon thy newly wedded wife and found her good. If I had seen
within her eyes—and love would quick have told me—that she were not the
worthy one, that she were not fitted to be thy mate through all these
years to come, I would have plunged my knife deep in her heart, but now
I know it is better for me to go, as life without thee has no joy.”

One can understand the charm that these happy, smiling, care-free little
women have for the men who come from homes where levity and
_laissez-faire_ are things to be condemned. The Burmese wife makes no
demands upon her lord and master; she is obedient, attendant to his
every want, and never scolding and discontented. As far as material
wants are concerned, the native woman of any Eastern country makes an
ideal wife for the average European, yet they can never be real
companions one with the other. There is more than the bar of language
between them; there is the bar of instincts, customs, and traditions.
The entire life of each has been passed in different environments.
Practically always the woman has little or no education, and knows
nothing of the world outside the town where she was born. There is never
any question of equality between the foreign husband and the native
wife; he is always her lord, she is always his slave. To the
light-hearted Burmese woman, to whom the marriage tie even with a man of
her own race is not a binding cord, these “marriages for a day” are not
always things of tragedy, but the curse falls heavily upon the child if
there should be one. In all Eastern countries—Egypt, India, Burmah,
China, and Japan—the half-caste is a being set apart. Ostracized by the
members of his father’s race, unrecognized by his mother’s people, he is
a social pariah, and one almost feels that, if society could enforce it,
he would be compelled to call out, “Unclean, unclean!” as did the lepers
in the olden time.

[Illustration:

  EN ROUTE TO A FESTIVAL, BURMAH.

  To face p. 198.]




                              CHAPTER XIII
                   BURMESE RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION


Judging from appearances, the Burmese woman is deeply religious. We see
her offering her flowers before the many shrines scattered throughout
the country, and hear the deep-toned bell hanging before the lord of
light as she strikes it three times to call the attention of the spirits
of the air to her piety. On days of festival the pagoda is thronged with
gaily dressed women, and at the greatest of all pagoda feasts, that of
the Shwe Dagon in Rangoon, women pilgrims from every part of Burmah come
to lay their tribute before the greatest shrine in Buddha-land. They
come by train and boat and bullock-cart, and to many it is the most
important event of the whole year. Girls look forward to the chance it
offers to show their charms to the male world, old ladies count on the
meeting of friends and the discussion of the events of the past year,
while to all it offers a chance to lay up merit for themselves and
advance a step on the long road that leads to Neban.

Near the temple are marionette shows, and theatrical companies make
these festivals their place of greatest profit, while the merchants
offer their wares for sale, and the sellers of incense, candles,
flowers, and offerings for the different shrines reap their harvest. Yet
over the whole joyous occasion, which would strike the casual observer
as simply a holiday for these happy people, is thrown the veil of a deep
religious motive. In the fascination of the secular gaieties around
them, these spiritual women do not forget the real object of their
pilgrimage, and the prayers and protestations before the altars, and the
constant booming of the deep-toned bells, show that praise of the Lord
of lords is not forgotten amidst the excitement and pleasures of the
world outside.

The Burmese woman may go to the pagoda on the duty days of each month,
of which there are four, or she may stay at home. The only force upon
her is that of public opinion, yet she generally goes, as it is the
meeting-place of all her world, and the care-free Burmese, both men and
women, are always looking for a chance of amusement and a meeting with
friends.

Whether or not she attends these duty days once a week is solely
dependent upon her piety, or her love of companionship; but deeply
ingrained within her soul is a daily duty that no Burman, unless of the
very advanced class, neglects—the propitiation of the nats, those
spirits inhabiting the air, the ground, the water, and all things, both
animate and inanimate. Even the stones upon the roadside may be the home
of spirits who may prove destructive or hostile at any time. To guard
against the evils that might come with neglect of such powerful enemies
to his happiness, the Burmese erects a shrine at the extremity of his
village, sometimes no larger than a bird house built in the pipul-tree.
There he may offer food, and light his tiny lamps, and pour his
offerings of water, and burn his incense.

He leaves the nats of the household to the especial care of his wife,
who covers all the posts within the rooms with white cloth, so that they
may be comfortable while sitting in their favourite places. To
counteract the effect of the evil spirits who may wish to take up their
dwelling within the home, the careful housewife keeps near at hand a jar
of water that has been blessed, and daily sprinkles floor and roof for
the protection of her family. It is believed that people who have been
executed for their crimes or who have met a violent death become nats
and haunt the place where they so suddenly departed from this world, and
this belief led to many cruel practices in former times. The burial of
men and women alive under the gates of a city originated in this desire
to protect its inhabitants, as these spirits wander around the place of
their death, and bring disaster upon strangers who may come with evil
intent. It is said that under the palace gates fifty men and women were
buried alive to protect those within the Imperial residence.

This belief in spirits leads to many evils, and the woman’s life is one
of constant fear for herself and for her loved ones. She naturally
consults in time of trouble with those who have a knowledge of spirit
lore, or who have power to control them and make of no avail their wrong
intentions. Consequently Burmah abounds in astrologers, necromancers,
wizards, and witch-doctors, who impose upon the fears of the women to a
marvellous extent. These charlatans vie with the doctors in their
ignorance.

A man of medicine in this land ruled by superstition needs no diploma,
and he administers a mixture of herbs and nasty tasting condiments in
such strong doses that they are bound to cure or kill. Quantity, not
quality, is what the sick Burmese requires; and if after a medicine is
administered five times she is not better, another kind is tried, and if
the desired effect is not produced, another doctor is called, who
perhaps makes a distinctly different diagnosis of the case, and the
dosing is commenced all over again with another set of medicines. It is
well known by all that the body is composed of four elements—earth,
water, fire, and air—and derangement of these four properties may cause
the illness. Before medicine is administered, the horoscope must be
consulted in order to learn the proportions of the elements within the
body, when perhaps it is found that the sickness is caused by an evil
act committed in a former life, or the seasons may be the cause of her
misfortune. It is always a most complicated affair, and perhaps the
doctor finds that the sufferer must refuse all food whose initial letter
begins with the same letter as that of the day of her birth. There are
ninety-six diseases that afflict mankind, and it often takes many
doctors and much medicine to decide with which one of the ninety-six
ailments the woman is contending.

If she should die, it is believed that the soul, in the shape of a black
butterfly, issues from the mouth, and dies at the same time as that of
the body which it inhabited. Although the Buddhists do not believe in
the actuality of the soul as we know it, this black butterfly is the
real spirit of the woman, and is with her constantly except at times of
sleep, when it may leave the earthly body and go roaming over the world.
It can never visit places strange to its owner, as it might lose its way
and not come back again, when both would die—the body because its spirit
was gone, the butterfly because it had lost its earthly home. One reason
why a Burman will not rouse one suddenly from a deep slumber is because
he is afraid that the butterfly might be on a visit and unable to return
to its home upon the man’s awakening, which, of course, would be most
fatal. This roaming spirit takes many chances, as there are goblins and
evil genii who desire nothing better than to eat black butterflies, and
often they become so frightened that they return home in a great panic,
which throws the owner of the soul into a fever. It sometimes happens
that the spirit is kept prisoner, and then the witch doctors are brought
in and many incantations are gone through to induce the evil gnomes to
release their hold upon the poor butterfly before it is too late.

Two souls who deeply love each other often wish to leave the world
together, or a mother dies and wishes her loved one, perhaps her only
child, to join her in the other land, and her spirit calls for her
baby’s butterfly, who will follow that of the mother unless frustrated
by the machinations of some wise woman who understands the way of
spirits. This woman comes to the house, and placing a mirror on the
floor by the dead mother or wife who is calling for her child or
husband, entreats the dead not to demand the soul of the living. As she
pleads with her she allows a piece of down to slip slowly on to the face
of the mirror and catches it in a handkerchief, which is then gently
placed on the breast of the living, and the spirit comes back to its
resting-place.

Superstition dominates the life of the Burmese woman as much as it does
her Indian sister. She believes in love potions and philtres to bring a
longed-for lover to her side. She consults with wise men, who tell her
whether the waning love of husband is caused by the nat or guardian of
the house; or if she is not yet wedded, she finds that the horoscopes of
herself and lover are not propitious and that he is not intended for her
mate. She also uses this man of science to revenge herself upon a hated
rival, and will cause an image to be made of clay, over which are
chanted devilish rituals which will cause death or madness to fall upon
the unsuspecting person.

Not only do the spirits of all worlds influence her, but each act of the
things around her has its meaning. If a hen should lay an egg upon a
cloth, the lucky owner will receive a present; and if she is going on a
journey and a snake should cross her path, her misfortune would be
certain. If a dog should carry a bone into the house, she blesses him,
as great riches and honour will come to all beneath her roof. But she is
hampered in her actions by the number of lucky and unlucky days that
control her destiny. There are days unfortunate for all the world, and
others that apply only to her, when she must act with exceeding care,
and understand the lore of the stars which were in the ascendant at her
birth. Thursday is generally a good day for all, but if a woman was so
foolhardy as to commence a work on Tuesday it might be fatal and she
would lose her life. Friday is the day of days on which to commence a
new enterprise, as success is bound to follow. The hair should be washed
once a month, if possible, but never on Monday, Friday, or Saturday. A
good mother on sending her son into the monastery would see that the
rite of cutting the hair did not fall upon Monday, Friday, or his
birthday, and it limits the choice of days, as this latter event, the
birthday, occurs once a week. There are also a few months especially
unlucky for a woman born under certain stars, and no undertaking should
be commenced in those months. In fact, the Burmese woman is ruled by
signs and omens from her birth to her death, and when the necromancers,
the wizards, the doctors, and the witches are unable longer to keep the
spirit, the little black butterfly, within the body, and she is gathered
to her fathers, rules and traditions govern her laying away to her last
resting-place.

[Illustration:

  A BURMESE WOMAN AND HER CIGAR.

  To face p. 206.]

In former days the dead were all cremated, but now burying has come into
general use. When death comes to a family it means elaborate
preparations and feasting from the time that the breath has left the
body and the coin is put into the mouth to pay the ferryman for the last
journey over the lonely river, until the seven days of mourning are
over. Yet it is hard to speak of these days as days of mourning, for
music, dancing before the bier, and the feasting in the home would cause
the onlooker at a Burmese funeral to believe that he was witnessing a
wedding-festival instead of a scene of sorrow.

The Burmese, like most Eastern nations, spend far too much upon their
funeral observances; and often a man goes into debt for life to pay for
the extravagances which custom and tradition make necessary to uphold
his standing in the community when the Angel of Death visits his
household.

A new custom, or an old custom made more elaborate, has increased the
cost of living for the hospitable Burman. When invitations are given for
any festivity, the invitation is accompanied by a present, often a silk
handkerchief or a turban, but with the rich this present is growing more
expensive, until it is becoming a burden that is causing many of the
conservative to complain. I was told while in Mandalay that when a
certain gentleman sent out invitations for his daughter’s wedding, he
accompanied each invitation with a gold sovereign, and as he bade more
than two hundred guests to the feast, his entertainment cost him a
goodly sum before the actual expense of the festival took place. This
useless expenditure falls heavily upon the small official who is trying
to live upon his salary, as salaries are not large in Burmah. A
gentleman with a sense of humour was calling upon us, and in the course
of conversation we touched upon the servant question. He asked us what a
Chinese butler received for his services in America. I told him ten
pounds a month. He gasped, and then he laughed and a twinkle came to his
black eyes as he said: “I am an official of the city of Mandalay, and I
receive just that amount. I think I will go to America.”

[Illustration:

  BURMESE WORKING WOMAN.

  To face p. 208.]

The Burmese woman in her home is allowed much more liberty than any
other Oriental woman. She is her husband’s equal, although she is taught
to look upon man as a superior being; still, that is only theoretical.
In actual life she is one with him in business, his amusements, and in
his religious life. He consults her upon matters of importance, and she
has proved worthy of trust and confidence, because she has a good mind
and has been allowed to use her judgment in matters of business as well
as in her own particular realm—the home. She has domestic troubles with
which to contend, but public opinion is helping her, especially in the
case of polygamy. This destroyer of woman’s happiness is sometimes
practised, but sentiment is against it, and it is a very brave man who
cares to run counter to the general opinion of his village or city in
regard to the number of women he shelters beneath his roof-tree. But if
the Burman may not marry more than one woman at a time, he may divorce
as many wives as he wishes. As the woman also shares in this
prerogative, the law is not so one-sided as it is in Mohammedan
countries. Manu, the ancient law-maker, allowed women to divorce their
husbands if they were too poor to support them; if they were lazy and
would not work; or if they were incapacitated by reason of old age, or
became cripples after marriage. The husband may send his wife away if
she bears him no male children; if she is not loving; or if she is
disobedient. Divorce is purely a personal affair, and the marriage tie
may be dissolved at any time the parties concerned think fit, without
calling in priest or lawyer.

There are very definite provisions in the laws in regard to the property
of the separating couple. In the event of divorce each party takes with
them the property brought by them to the new home, and what they
accumulated since marriage is either divided by mutual agreement or by a
decision of the village elders who sanction the separation.

I am told that divorce is not so common as one would believe,
considering the ease with which it may be obtained. The Burman is a very
easy-going man, the Burmese wife a clever woman who makes it her
business to understand her lord and master, and consequently she
generally rules him. “Burmah is the land of henpecked husbands,” one
Burman told me, “all the world knows our shame”—and then he laughed.

Education is coming more slowly to the Burmese woman than it is to the
Indian or the Egyptian. She has not seen its need, consequently has not
demanded it. But it will come in time, and the intellectual broadening
will free her from the cloud of superstition that now surrounds her and
controls her actions to a great extent.

[Illustration:

  GOLDEN PAGODA, MANDALAY.

  To face p. 210.]




                              CHAPTER XIV
                           THE LADY OF CHINA


It is not easy for the woman of the Occident to understand the life of
the woman of the Orient. The woman of the West, in her freedom, her
complex social life, her husband’s love, looks pityingly upon the
Eastern woman in what appears to be a seemingly restricted sphere—the
home. It is known that she is practically a prisoner, not by force but
by custom and convention; that the wall of the compound are the walls of
the world to her. It is not realized, however, that there she is
supreme, and from within those compound-walls, she sways to a great
extent the thought and life of China.

The Chinese lady does not lead a life of leisure or indolence. The
picture of the Eastern woman sitting upon divans and eating sweetmeats
does not apply to the women of this country. If she is the wife of an
official or of a man of wealth, she has a large household over which she
must preside. If the husband has a mother living the mother is the head
of the house, and her will is absolute. This was shown rather forcibly a
few years ago in Peking. The son of a Chinese official while abroad
married a European woman. She returned to Peking with her husband, and
within a few months fled to a foreign embassy and asked protection, as
she believed her life in danger. The mother-in-law had said: “While I
was in Europe with you I was powerless, but here I am absolute. I could
even kill you and no one would question the act. It is my right to do
with you as I wish.” The minister could do nothing, as by her marriage
the girl had become a Chinese subject and was under the laws of China,
which gave the mother of her husband absolute control over her life and
person.

Often there are an incredible number of people living under one
roof-tree, as all the sons bring their wives to their father’s home
instead of establishing separate households. Sheng, the director of
railways, told me that there were 250 people who took rice each day
within his compound. The walls of his garden enclosed a small village.
There was a large building containing his office and residence.
Radiating from this there were rows of smaller houses, where his
brothers and married sons lived with their numerous families.

A Chinese house, even of the very rich, is a shabby affair, judged from
Western standards. It is always surrounded by a wall, generally painted
white. Within the entrance gate is a large wooden screen, placed to
insure privacy, and also to guard the doorways from evil spirits, which
are known to travel only in straight lines and to abhor corners. If the
family is large the home consists of a series of houses built around
courtyards. Across the first court are the master’s rooms and offices;
then come the houses of the different families, as each wife has a suite
of rooms for herself and her children. Some of the wives of the more
wealthy Chinese occupy an entire building. The kitchen and the servants’
quarters are at the end of the last courtyard.

The floors of all the rooms are of rough boards, with great cracks
between them, sometimes covered with a rug but more often bare. The
walls are composed of the same wide boards, with here and there an
embroidered hanging or a scroll bearing the words of some honoured sage.
The furniture of the reception-room consists of small tables alternating
with straight-backed chairs, arranged with mathematical precision around
the three sides of the room. Opposite the doorway is the seat of honour,
or an opium-couch. Often the furniture is elaborately carved or inlaid
with mother-of-pearl, but it looks formal and precise. The chairs, with
their red embroidered cushions, are very uncomfortable for the
Westerner, because of their straight, low backs and high, narrow seats,
that make one long for a footstool. There are no buffets nor sideboards
in the dining-rooms, and stools are used in place of chairs. The tables
are square, seating eight, and neither tablecloths nor napkins are
considered necessary adjuncts to dining.

The bedrooms are small, and filled wellnigh to overflowing by an
enormous carved bed, with red embroidered curtains hanging from the
heavy canopy and long silken tassels draping the four posts. The Chinese
do not indulge in mattresses nor springs, sheets, nor pillow-cases. The
pillows are small bolsters, and the bedclothing consists of a series of
wadded “comfortables” made of silk or cotton. Their dislike of springs
is very intense. A hospital for the Chinese was opened in one of the
interior towns, and the doctors, wishing to do the very best they could
to make their patients comfortable, bought, at great expense, foreign
beds with springs. They found, to their disgust, that the patients, as
soon as the nurse turned her back, insisted on placing the bedclothing
upon the floor and lying there, instead of in the nice comfortable beds
that had been provided for them. They claimed that the springs made them
“seasick.” When Chinese ladies are calling upon a foreign woman, one of
the chief ways to amuse them is to take them over the house and permit
them to see the furnishings of the homes of the people from over the
sea. They are always intensely interested in the beds and look at the
springs from all sides, sitting on them and pressing them down with
their hands, finally shaking their heads, as much as to say, “It is past
all belief what these strange people will have in their houses.”

[Illustration:

  CHINESE WOMEN WARMING HANDS AND FEET WITH BRAZIERS.

  To face p. 214.]

The chief article of furniture in the kitchen is the stove, a huge
affair made of brick. This stove has generally three holes, in which are
set the iron cooking-pots, shaped like large washbowls and made of very
thin metal, in order that the ingredients may cook with the smallest
amount of heat necessary, as the question of fuel is a serious one in
China. In the country around Shanghai, rice-straw and faggots are the
main fuel, while on every hillside in the country one sees women and
children cutting the dried grass and gathering every available thing
that may be burned. Because of the lack of body in the fuel it keeps one
person busy feeding the fire while another attends to the cooking.

The food served at a feast, and which the average foreigner sees, is
quite different from that eaten every day. At a feast there are often
twenty or thirty courses. Swallow’s-nest soup, shark-fins, pigeon eggs
cooked with nuts, ducks prepared in many ways, fowl, fish, and
innumerable sweets. Rice is served as the last course, while at the
ordinary dinner it is the principal dish. It is to the Chinese what
bread is to the European or potatoes to the Irish. The food is cooked in
vegetable oil, made from beans or cabbages, or, for the richer class,
from peanuts. The chief meat is pork, which is cut into little bits and
cooked with a vegetable. Beef is not used by the average Chinese. The
cow is a beast of burden, and none of her products are eaten. I have
seen a great official, on being told that the ice-cream he was eating
was made of milk, deposit upon his plate the contents of his mouth with
more haste than grace. One receives the impression from pictures that
the Chinese politely picks up a few grains of rice with his chopsticks
and carries them slowly to his mouth. This is a picture of Occidental
imagination rather than Oriental reality. He takes with his chopsticks
some vegetables from the dishes in the centre of the table, to which all
have access, and, after depositing the chosen morsel on the top of his
rice, he lifts the bowl to his face and uses his chopsticks to shovel as
much of the rice into the opening as its capacity will permit. The
Chinese are supposed to be a slow and phlegmatic race, but if one were
to judge by the rapidity with which a bowl of rice will disappear, one
would easily give them a place among the most rapid and progressive
races of the world.

Food used by the Chinese is very cheap. The Viceroy at Nanking, a man of
unlimited wealth and power, told me that the food for himself did not
cost more than twenty cents a day. The servants in the American
Consulate had their food bought by the second cook, paying him five
shillings each per month, which sum included food, cooking, and service.
On board a foreign houseboat the captain is paid four shillings per day
for the hire of six men, and they are fed by him out of this sum. It is
made possible by the cheapness of the vegetables. I have seen him buy
three bushels of a curly-leaved vegetable resembling spinach for
twopence.

The lady of China takes no part in her husband’s business or social
life. Much of the business in China among the official and rich class is
transacted socially, and the dinners are generally given at a tea-house
or restaurant, or on the pleasure-boats kept for that purpose. Even the
very finest of these entertainment-places are very shabby affairs, from
a Western standpoint. They are also extremely dirty. The floors are made
of unmatched boards that have never seen the scrubbing-brush, and the
guests throw their fish-bones, cigarette-ends, etc., under the table.

The Chinese understand the art of dining, and we who simply go to eat
cannot appreciate the social side of this form of entertainment as does
the Eastern man. He eats a few courses, sheds a jacket, loosens a belt,
talks to a singing girl, smokes, then eats a few more courses, gambles a
while, and really enjoys himself for four or five hours. When he enters
the room for the feast he is given a slip of paper, on which he writes
the name of his favourite singing girl and her place of residence. When
all the guests arrive the slips are taken by a servant to the different
places, and at intervals during the dinner the girls arrive. These girls
are owned by men or women who bought them when they were very young, and
have trained them for singing girls or professional amusers. They sway
in on their tiny bound feet, beautifully dressed, painted and powdered,
and take their place behind the man who sent for them. They sit on a
narrow stool, chat with the man, have a few puffs from a water pipe, eat
melon-seeds (they never eat or drink anything from the table); then
their maid brings them their musical instrument, and they sing, in a
high falsetto voice, a song or two. If the song and the singer are
admired, the guests show their approval by loud “Hah, hah’s.” After her
song the girl arises, says good-bye to her patron, and leaves for her
next engagement. The girl’s owner receives from four to sixteen
shillings, according to the fame of the girl; she receives nothing,
unless a present is given her by some admirer. Many of them have
beautiful bracelets and hair ornaments of pearls and jade, and many own
gold water pipes that are very costly. They all carry little makeup
boxes, and powder their noses whenever the desire seizes them. To
Western eyes they are not pretty, with their red and white faces. They
paint their forehead, nose, and around their mouth white, the cheeks and
under-lip bright red, and to obtain the proper willow-leaf pattern for
the eyebrows their own are shaved and others more slanting are painted
in their place. It is hard to see any charm in these little women. They
sing through their noses, talk very little, and that the most inane
gossip, powder themselves, then bow and go away. They seem to have
neither ideas, expression, nor figure.

[Illustration:

  CHINESE WOMEN AND CHAIR-BEARERS.

  To face p. 218.]

With each one of these entertainers is a maid, who supports her as she
sways along on her little feet, and who sees that she does not try to
run away from her master. If the girl is popular and in much demand she
has a sedan chair and two bearers; if a very young girl, she is carried
on the shoulders of a strong, husky coolie. Many of them lead pitiful
lives, and a singing girl’s only hope of escape is to become the
secondary wife or concubine of a rich man; then, if she should be so
fortunate as to bear a son for her husband she would hold an honourable
position, and nothing could be said against her because of her former
life.

A Chinese gentleman is out to dinner practically every night, or else he
is entertaining friends. He sleeps until noon, goes to his particular
club for amusement and to meet his friends in the afternoon, and returns
to his home in the wee sma’ hours of the night. The wife or wives stay
at home and take care of the house and children. No Chinese lady ever
dines at a restaurant; in fact, no Chinese lady ever eats at the same
table with her husband; he would “lose face” if he ate with a woman.
Although a lady is never seen dining in public, she frequently gives
dinner parties to her friends and relatives. The courtyards are then
filled with the chattering chair-bearers, who, squatting on their
haunches as only an Eastern servant can, drink innumerable cups of tea
served by the servants of the hostess. The guests are met at the
entrance to the women’s quarters by the lady of the house, and a great
many bows are made, varying in depth according to the rank of the guest.

Each guest has a maid, who from time to time brings her mistress a
vanity box, from which is extracted powder and rouge; and she, like her
frailer sister, the sing-song girl, applies a little more white to her
already whitened nose, or rouges her cheeks, or touches a little red
paint to the lower lip. Paint and powder are not confined to the women
of the amusement class, as the Chinese lady (that is, the younger ones;
older women do not make up at all) paints her face more than is
beautiful to foreign eyes. Even the hands are not forgotten, and within
the palms the rouge brush is used. The hands of a Chinese lady are
beautiful—long, slender, and delicate, looking as helpless as a flower.
In the olden time long fingernails were worn as a mark of ladyhood, and
were often covered with jade or gold, telling plainly that the wearer
belonged to the leisured class and did not need to toil. In fact, the
whole expression of a Chinese lady is helplessness. From her exquisitely
coiffured head, with its mass of pearl and jade, to her tiny feet, on
which she sways instead of walks, she impresses one as a dainty piece of
jewellery, too fragile for real life. The small feet accentuated this,
but now they are passing, and the new woman of China is not binding her
daughter’s feet.

[Illustration:

  BOUND FEET OF CHINESE WOMAN.

  To face p. 221.]

The curse of footbinding does not fall so heavily upon women who may sit
and embroider, or if needs must travel can be borne upon the shoulders
of their chair-bearers; but it is upon the poor girl, whose parents hope
to have one in the family who may better their fortunes by a rich
marriage, and, hoping thus, they bind their feet. If this marriage fails
and she is forced to work within her household, or, even worse, if
poverty compels her to work in the fields, or add her mite gained by
most heavy labour to help fill the many eager mouths at home, then she
should have our pity. We have seen the small-footed woman pulling heavy
boats along the tow-paths, or leaning on their hoes to rest their tired
feet while working in the fields of cotton. To her each day is a day of
pain, and this new law forbidding the binding of the feet of children
will come as a blessing from the gods. But it will not pass at once, as
so many now loudly proclaim; it will take at least three generations:
the children of the present children will quite likely all have natural
feet. The people in the country, far from the noise of change and
progress, will not feel immediately that they can wander so far afield
from the old ideas of what is beautiful in their womenkind.

The most noticeable thing about a Chinese woman, poor as well as rich,
is her hair: it is jet-black, and made shiny and smooth with a paste
until not a strand is out of place. At certain times of the year small
wreaths are made from tiny yellow flowers and placed around the knot at
the back. The hair is never untidy, and the artistic disorder of the
hair of the foreign woman is secretly much disliked by the Chinese. The
late Empress-Dowager once gave the wife of a foreign Minister a set of
combs as a present. The Minister’s wife was delighted, as the gift was
enclosed in an elaborate silver box, and she did not see the subtle
suggestion in the present, over which the Chinese of the province
chuckled for many a day.

A party of Chinese ladies presents a very gay appearance. They wear silk
or satin, nearly always brocaded and often heavily embroidered. In the
winter, as the houses are not heated, many furs are worn, but almost
entirely, except in the case of sable, as linings for the silken coats.
One garment is put on over the other until the right degree of warmth is
obtained. Instead of speaking of degrees of cold, the Chinese say it is
three-coat weather or five-coat weather. The children are clothed in
wadded garments, so thick that the overdressed babies look like little
round balls and can scarcely move. In the summer the ladies wear
delicate gauzes over their undergarments of grass-linen.

Nearly every province in China has its own customs and peculiarities in
dress as well as in everything else, but they all agree on the rich reds
and blues, the purples and mauves for the making of their jackets, while
their wide, skirt-like trousers are often of a much deeper colour than
the jacket and trimmed with a wide band of black. The mixture of tints
sounds most incongruous to foreign ears, but Chinese women have the
faculty of weaving the most clashing hues into a work of harmonious art.
Except in the case of an old lady, black is seldom worn, and as white is
the colour of mourning, it is seen only on occasions of sorrow. A
Chinese lady can never understand why European babies are dressed in
white. Children are the symbols of happiness, and it seems to them most
inappropriate to garb them in sorrow’s colours. All the gayest and
brightest colours of China’s dye-pots are made to produce the clothing
for China’s children.

The dress of the Chinese woman, rich or poor, is very modest, fastening
close around the neck, with sleeves coming to the hands and the loose
jacket formed so as to disguise the lines of the body. European women
are severely censured in China because of their _décoletté_ gowns and
tight dresses, which seem to the Chinese the height of vulgarity. When
one of the Imperial princes was _en route_ to England, he attended his
first foreign dinner in Shanghai. About twenty-five of the guests were
English and American ladies, dressed in their most elaborate gowns,
which means extreme _décoletté_. The attachés of the prince had tried to
prepare his highness for the sight he was to witness; but they had
evidently underestimated its startling qualities, because when the
prince arrived and gave one amazed look at his hostess and the line of
waiting ladies he was nonplussed. He looked pitifully for his
interpreter, and, not receiving aid from him, put down his head, shut
his eyes, and bravely stumbled around the room, groping blindly for each
lady’s hand, as he had been informed that he should shake hands with
them. This was another serious breach of Chinese etiquette, as no
Chinese man must ever touch a woman. The Chinese views in regard to
modesty connected with the dress of women has caused the missionaries in
the interior to expurgate from the magazines that may by chance fall
into the hands of Chinese visitors all pictures of lightly clad ladies
who are used to advertise soaps and powders and the underwear of our
American markets.

The Chinese are very fond of their children. They say, “In the children
our parents return to us; in the children we live again.” When ladies
visit each other they always ask for the children, who are brought in by
the nurses. With their jackets of red, their trousers of bright green or
purple, their baby-caps with its rows of tiny brass Buddhas that shine
and glitter like gold, and the mark of red paint on the forehead or on
the tip of the tiny nose, they look like brilliant little elfs. The
girls are dressed quite as richly as the boys, and it is to the interest
of the nurse to make the children as attractive as possible, because the
pleased visitor generally gives her a small present of money wrapped in
red paper.

[Illustration:

  AN OLD-FASHIONED CHINESE GIRLS’ SCHOOL.

  To face p. 224.]

Visiting a high-class Chinese lady, one is impressed with the number of
children and servants that seem to be swarming over the place. When one
of a family has distinction or wealth, all the poor relatives come to
dwell with him. Li Hung-chang built a home in Shanghai in which to live
when he should retire from private life. When asked why he built so far
from his home province, which was contrary to Chinese custom, he said he
built as far as possible from his native town, hoping that his poor
relations could not obtain the money with which to come to Shanghai.

The servants in a Chinese family are not expensive, so far as wages are
concerned, but they cost a great deal in perquisites. They rarely
receive more than eight shillings a month, but they are given their
food, and they help themselves lavishly to anything they may desire.
They dress themselves from the old clothing of the family, freely take
the hairpins and the toilet articles of the mistress, clothe their
children from the common wardrobe, and, in fact, are a part of the
family.

There is a peculiar democratic custom which servants may claim, but
which is seldom used—the right of reviling the family when discharged.
The youngest son of Li Hung-chang lived next door to me, and an old
serving-woman was discharged for a reason that evidently did not appeal
to her sense of justice. She sat beneath the gateway and for three hours
called down curses upon the Li family at the top of her voice. This
happened on one of the principal residence streets of Shanghai, and the
police passed and repassed, but no one tried to stop her. The house
steward made two or three feeble attempts to persuade her to leave, but
she would turn her facile tongue upon him, and he would gather his
skirts in his hands and start on a most undignified run for the house,
evidently believing discretion to be the better part of valour. At the
end of three hours, when she was completely exhausted, she was led away.

The Chinese lady and her servants gossip together as friends, rooms are
entered without warning, conversations interrupted, and suggestions
offered which, to the foreigner, seem to be of the grossest
impertinence. This intimacy is due partly to the restricted life the
lady leads, and partly to the fact that many of the servants are distant
relatives. Practically the only news from the outside world that comes
to the woman behind the walls is brought by her sons or by the servants.
She makes few visits, and these usually at the home of some relative,
entering her closely covered chair within her courtyard and carried
swiftly to the courtyard of the house where she is to visit. There is no
such thing as “calling” between the wives of men who are mutually
interested in affairs or who are business associates. The wife of a
Treaty Commissioner called upon the wives of the Chinese officials who
were associated with her husband in conducting the treaty. They were
very polite and returned her call, but are still wondering _why_ she
called.

The wife of a consul wished to give a luncheon to the wife of the Mayor
of Shanghai. She asked the interpreter who was assisting her in the
arrangements if other Chinese ladies of the same rank might be asked.
The interpreter said, “No; a Chinese lady would rather not meet women
other than relatives.”

The Chinese wife lives entirely for her family and with her family. She
rarely goes to a public place of amusement, although in some of the
ports, like Shanghai and Canton, entire families are seen at the Chinese
theatres. Theatrical companies come to the houses of the rich and
official class for the amusement of guests, and story-tellers and
musicians, nearly always blind, go from door to door asking to be taken
into the women’s courtyards to help while away the dreary hours.
Astrologers and fortune-tellers pass along the resident streets,
striking their little gong to attract the notice of the women behind the
walls. They are extremely clever, and cast horoscopes in a manner
similar to that of the Egyptians of olden times. They are very popular
among the Chinese women, as are fortune-tellers with women of all races.

We are prone to sympathize with the Chinese woman because of the
plurality of wives, but one sees little evidence of the need of our
sympathy. The Chinese have a saying: “The head wife should cherish the
inferior wives as the great tree cherishes the creepers that gather
round it.” I do not know whether this sage advice is always followed,
but I have seen the several wives of many officials, all friendly as
sisters and all working for the common good of the home.

I called upon the wife of an official and was met at the door by two
ladies. One of them was a very old Chinese lady, with the smallest bound
feet that I have ever seen; they could not have been more than 2½ inches
in length. She was partially supported on one side by a servant, and on
the other by a beautifully dressed Manchu woman. After I was seated in
the place of honour at the left of the elderly lady, and tea was
brought, I asked the usual question, “What is your honourable age?” She
replied, “Sixty-two”; then, as always follows, I said, “How many
children have you?” She replied, “Five.” I asked their ages, and, to my
astonishment, heard her say that the eldest was seventeen years and the
youngest two months. When I could find words to continue the
conversation, I turned to the Manchu lady and asked her practically the
same questions. She replied that she was thirty-five years old, was the
mother of five children, the eldest being seventeen years and the
youngest two months. Then I realized that the first wife had no
children, but, according to Chinese custom, claimed as her own all
children born to the secondary wives.

The custom was further exemplified by the wife of a magistrate who was
calling upon me, accompanied by the second wife. After the usual
questions in regard to age and health, I asked this lady how many
children she possessed. She looked at me in a puzzled manner for a
moment, then turned to the other wife and, keeping track of the names by
turning down a finger at each count, said: “Let me see—how many children
have I? Tsai-an has three, Wo-kee has five—that is eight; Ma-lu has
two—ten; Sin Yun has four—fourteen; Sih-peh two—sixteen; and you have
three”; then, turning to me, she said, “I have nineteen children.”

I have a Chinese friend who lived in Canton until he became involved in
some political trouble that caused him to leave for Shanghai, where he
would be under the protection of the foreign settlements. He left behind
him his mother, four wives, and sixteen children. He became lonely in
his exile, and asked his mother to send him a couple of his wives. She
wrote him that they were busy attending to the education of their
children, and that they did not speak the dialect in Shanghai and would
feel like strangers; consequently it would be better for him to marry a
couple of women native to the province, who would be more contented. He
took her advice.

There is an American woman doctor in Shanghai who goes to the homes of
the rich Chinese in the practice of her profession. I asked her one day
if she knew the wife of Mr. Lu, a prominent merchant who had a most
beautiful home on the smart drive in Shanghai. She replied that she knew
a part of her—numbers one, four, seven, and eleven. A rich man is only
restricted in the number of wives he may possess by his ability to
support them. Gossip says—I do not know how true it is—that Yuan Shi-kai
has the unlucky number of thirteen wives beneath the roof-tree of the
President’s palace in Peking.

One would naturally suppose that endless complications of a disagreeable
nature, leading to quarrels and bitterness, would arise, yet there does
not seem to be more unhappiness in the average Chinese home than in
those of any other country. The first wife, she who has been chosen by
the parents, is the head of the household, and her word is law, the
other wives practically occupying the position of servants. That is the
theory, but in actual practice she who is fortunate enough to be the
mother of sons, or perhaps the last girl-wife, is generally the
favourite, and wields great influence over the master of the household.
I said to a woman calling upon me one day that I should not feel so
badly after the first wife was chosen to replace me, but that the choice
of my immediate successor would make me very unhappy. She looked
astonished, and said: “That depends entirely upon the woman. If she is
agreeable and pleasant, it is a pleasure to have her in the family.
Often a first wife chooses a second.”

We of the Western world look upon a great many wives as a luxury only to
be enjoyed by the very rich. I have a friend who is very intimate in a
Chinese family in which there are five wives. Since hearing her talk I
have changed my mind in regard to the luxury of the plurality of wives.
In this household the first wife lives with the husband’s family at
their country place; the other four live with him. The husband supplies
a cook for the common use of the family, and this cook provides rice,
the staple article of food for the household. Each wife is given a
servant and one pound a month with which to buy her luxuries, and once a
year she is given a complete suit of silk or satin clothing, and if a
favourite, I presume she receives jewels, etc., from her husband. A man
told me that in the interior of China (Shanghai, Peking, and some of the
larger cities are much more expensive) he could support easily his four
wives and fourteen children on an income of £200 a year.

There are many foolish women who marry attachés of the Chinese embassies
in England and America, or, more foolish still, who marry a Chinese
merchant. They are, in fact, marrying the romance of the East
represented to them in the person of the suave little almond-eyed man,
and they pay bitterly for their mistake if they ever return to their
husband’s country. They are recognized by neither Chinese nor
foreigners, have no social standing in any community, and lead an
existence that calls for pity.

There lived in Shanghai a man who had once been a secretary of the
Legation in London. He had a great career ahead of him until he married
an Englishwoman, when he was ordered home, degraded, and lived for years
as the petty official in the office of the mayor of the city, at a wage
scarcely liveable even for a Chinese. His wife, recognized by neither
English nor Chinese, became addicted to opium and drink, and died after
a few years of unhappiness. A woman doctor told me that she found the
body lying in an outhouse, on a bundle of straw, waiting for burial,
where finally it found a resting-place in a Chinese cemetery.

A few years ago a woman came to the English Consul in Nanking and asked
for protection. She had married a Chinese merchant in London, and on his
return to his own country he met with business reverses that reduced him
practically to the position of a coolie. She had been forced to go into
the paddy-fields transplanting rice. It is bad enough to see a Chinese
woman standing in the mud and water to her knees, doing this
back-breaking work, but it would be heartrending to see a woman of our
race toiling alongside of the ignorant Chinese peasant, under the rays
of the tropical sun, which beats down so pitilessly upon the exposed
rice-fields. The Consul was extremely sorry for the woman, but could not
interfere in the domestic life of a Chinese subject. When she found
nothing could be done for her, she took the little round ball of sleep
with which so many Chinese wives pass across the bridge of death—opium.

If these women who think that it would be such a wonderful experience to
live in the glorious East, of which they have read most glittering
tales, would realize that when the man returns to his homeland his
parents have the right of choosing a wife for him, who is his real wife,
and the poor foreign woman is reduced to the position of a concubine, I
think many of them would not take a step so fatal to happiness. Dr.
Barchet, of the Baptist Mission near Ningpo, saw an American woman
living in a small village who was one of four wives, all occupying the
same peasant’s cottage. When asked why she did not return to her
homeland, she said that she was ashamed to have her people learn of her
great mistake, as she married against their wishes. The bad air and
coarse food were having their effect upon this delicately raised girl,
and she was a victim to the great white plague that claims so many lives
in China.

Suicide is very common among the women of China. When the mother-in-law
becomes too oppressive, or life becomes intolerable from other causes,
the wife often takes the law into her own hands and takes opium or jumps
into the well. She then not only receives surcease from her sorrows,
but, according to Chinese superstition, her spirit will linger around
the home, haunting and tormenting the person who was the cause of her
taking the fatal step.

There is very little intercourse between foreign and Chinese women. The
latter do not seem to care about making the acquaintance of the women
from over the seas. It is only of late years that the wives of foreign
officials in Shanghai have had any intercourse with the families of the
local officials. Such intercourse consists simply in an interchange of
calls, and a luncheon given once a year by the wife of the senior
Consul, and returned by the wife of the Chinese taotai or mayor. There
can never be any degree of friendship between the Chinese woman and the
European. Their lives are radically different; the Chinese woman’s
ideals are not the same as those of her foreign sister. Their only
common subject of conversation is in regard to their children; and even
there a bar is soon put across the conversation, as the Chinese mother
has different hopes and ambitions for the future of her children than
those of the woman from England or America. She knows nothing of the
outside world, and her only subjects of conversation relate to household
gossip, clothes, and the actions of her friends. In Shanghai a society
is formed that is trying to bring the women of all nationalities into
touch with one another, but it is not a very great success so far as the
Chinese lady is concerned. She feels awkward and ill at ease in the
presence of these women, who talk so easily on matters of which she
knows nothing, and she much prefers the quiet of her courtyards, amidst
the life she understands.

When a Chinese lady is persuaded to go into the world she is always most
dignified, even under embarrassing circumstances. I once gave a luncheon
for the wife of a Governor of a province, to which the wives of the
consuls and a few other ladies were invited, about twenty in all. When
the guest of honour arrived all the other guests rose to meet her. As
she entered the doorway her tiny bound feet stepped upon a rug, which
slipped from beneath her, and instead of swaying gently across the room
she sat down and slid to the feet of her astonished hostess. She was
helped to rise by the frightened guests, and turned and shook hands with
them gravely, without a flicker of the eyelids to indicate that sliding
was not the usual mode of entering a drawing-room.

The Chinese lady is trained not to show emotion of any kind. Her face,
to be beautiful, must be absolutely placid, care-free, “like unto the
full moon in its glory.” They consider the foreign woman extremely ugly,
with their long, care-lined faces. They say that if it were not for the
clothing they could not distinguish men from women. Their faces, with
their prominent noses and deep-set eyes, appear to them coarse and
unrefined. I have seen children when suddenly confronted with a foreign
woman scream in terror.

The Chinese do not impress the casual visitor as a nervous people. It is
said that they can bear without murmuring the most severe punishments,
and a torture that would reduce a foreign man to frenzy will elicit only
a groan from a member of this phlegmatic race. The women seem to share
with their menfolk in this lack of “nerves.” I once made a visit to the
wife of the city magistrate, whose home was in the official “yamen.” She
showed me over her house, and on entering her bedroom I went to the only
window in the room to see what kind of a view was to be obtained. What
was my horror to find that the window looked directly upon the
punishment courtyard, where a man was then being held down upon his face
and a bamboo vigorously applied by the lictor. The moans of the victim
could be faintly heard, and what it would be in the summer-time, when
the windows were open, could very well be imagined. I turned to my
hostess and said, “How frightful! How can you stand it?” She shrugged
her shoulders and said, “Oh, one becomes used to it.”

The Chinese woman is very devout, and observes all the feast days and
days of fasting. It is really the woman who keeps up the religion of
Confucius and Buddha. An official who had just returned from sacrificing
to the dragon who was supposed to have swallowed the sun at the time of
an eclipse, was asked if he believed in this dragon. He laughed and
said, “Of course not.” “Then,” the curious questioner continued, “why do
you do it?” He said, “Why do men in America go to church? Mainly because
their wives wish them to go. It is the same here. It is the women who
are the spiritual force of China. It is they who are devout, and it is
they who keep open the temples and preserve the belief in the gods.”

[Illustration:

  WHEELBARROW AND COOLIE—USED IN PLACE OF WAGONS IN TOWNS AND COUNTRY
    VILLAGES NEAR SHANGHAI.

  To face p. 236.]

The Chinese woman’s religion is difficult of definition, but whatever
she is, a follower of the teachings of Confucius or of the Great Buddha,
she turns to her gods both in time of trouble and in time of
thanksgiving. It is a real factor in her life. Buddhism has a great
festival in the spring, about the time of our Easter. Then the roads are
covered with processions of women going or coming from the temples. All
ranks are seen—the lady borne swiftly along in her sedan chair with the
spirit money hanging from the poles; the middle-class woman riding on
the passenger wheelbarrows with four or five of her friends, with her
incense and candles in her lap; and the poor woman trudging along the
stone-covered road, carrying her offerings in a basket of rice-straw
which she has woven at home. When they arrive at the temple they are all
of one great sisterhood. The spirit money of rich and poor alike is
placed in the great incense-burner in the outer courtyard, where it goes
up in flames to the gods. Then the temple is entered, the candles are
lighted, and the incense is placed before the particular deity whose
kind offices they implore; the head is touched to the floor, prayers are
uttered, and the woman returns to the courtyards, where she may pass the
time with her friends, feeding the carp in the ponds or admiring the
great trees which are found within the courts of many of the big
temples. If a special boon is to be asked, or if there is doubt and
trouble, she takes a hollow bamboo vase, about the size of a quart
measure, in which are a couple of dozen sticks of slit bamboo. She
kneels three times, touching her head to the floor each time, then
shakes the bamboo with a rotary motion until one of the sticks detaches
itself from the others and falls to the floor. This she takes to a
priest, who reads the number upon it and gives her a slip of yellow
paper covered with Chinese characters, and from it she will find the
answer to her prayers. It takes considerable imagination to obtain
solace from one of these pieces of paper, as they are made to fit all
cases, and carry about as much meaning as does the “fortune” on the card
handed one by the figure in the slot-machine for which we pay a penny.

The gods are not only worshipped at the temples, but religious adoration
plays an important part in the home life. Over the kitchen stove, in a
niche, reposes the household god. From that high place he watches all
that goes on within the household. He knows the sins of commission and
the sins of omission. Once a year he is taken down and with great
ceremony burned and sent up to the Great God to report upon the actions
of the household for the year, and a new god is installed in his place.
In the meantime he is propitiated in various ways. The first thing in
the morning a small bowl of rice and another of water is placed before
him, and incense and candles are burned daily at his feet to gain his
favour.

Priests are frequent visitors at the homes, and religious ceremonies
attend all the great family events, like the first shaving of the baby’s
head, or that most important day when the mother attains her fiftieth
year. This is a day of general rejoicing, when her children unite and
buy the happy mother the greatest and most precious present she can
receive—her grave-clothes. They are presented amidst much feasting, and
chanting of prayers, and burning of candles and incense, and the mother
is congratulated by all her friends for the blessing of such filial
children.




                               CHAPTER XV
                       THE RED CHAIR OF MARRIAGE


The home must have its basis in marriage, and to that important episode
in woman’s life the greatest attention is given. In China, as in India,
the betrothal ceremony is as binding as the marriage, although I am told
that the “new woman” of China is rebelling at the child betrothals and
the lack of freedom granted her in the choice of a mate. It is said that
in Shanghai a couple who have been betrothed in childhood by their
parents, on arriving at marriageable age, may go before a magistrate and
repudiate the agreement, and in many instances their cases have been
upheld even against the protests of father and mother. This shows the
most extreme progressiveness of present-day China, as hitherto a child,
especially a girl, was simply a chattel to be disposed of according to
the dictates of the nearest male relative. Still, with the exception of
the foreign settlement of Shanghai, the old customs of betrothal and
marriage prevail, and the principals in the marriage have very little to
say in regard to the disposal of their future. Often children are
betrothed before their birth by parents, who, being good friends and
desiring to unite the families, agree that if a boy is born in one
family and a girl in the other, they shall marry. Other matches are made
by a professional “go-between,” who is employed by the parents of either
the boy or girl to find a suitable alliance for their child. This
“go-between” is so thoroughly recognized that the Chinese have a saying,
“Without a go-between no happy marriage can be effected.”

After the search culminates in the discovery of the bride and groom of
equal social standing and endowed with the proper amount of this world’s
goods, the names of the girl and boy are written upon a paper and taken
to the necromancer, who decides whether the marriage will be fortunate.
Every child is born under the protection of some animal; if the
protecting animal of the daughter is a sheep and that of her fiancé a
lion, naturally they should not marry. But if the guardian animal of the
bride-to-be should be a bird, they will live in peace with one another.
The girl must be thirteen or fifteen or seventeen years of age, as an
even number would be most unlucky. Seventeen years is about the average
marriageable age of a Chinese girl at present, although formerly they
married when hardly more than children.

The marriage customs are essentially the same all over China. The
husband gives a certain sum of money to the bride’s parents, which
varies with the position of the families. Among the poor the girl is
practically sold, although the money is supposedly used for the purchase
of the wedding outfit. The bride’s standing in the family of the husband
often depends largely upon the trousseau and the furnishings she takes
with her to her new home.

The outfit a girl of the middle class should take with her, in order
that she might command the proper respect of her new relatives, should
include three red trunks, one table, two chairs, one wardrobe, three
tubs, two buckets, one washstand, one dressing-case, a set of scissors,
a footstove, a teapot, wine-pot, two candlesticks, a basin, sugar-bowl,
tea-caddy, one set of cups, a complete set of bowls and dishes, two
wadded quilts, two embroidered pillows, embroidered curtain for the bed,
and a complete outfit of clothing.

This donation of the bride’s parents to the formation of a new home is
carried before the bride in the wedding procession. Often musicians
herald the coming of a bride, who, from her closely covered red chair,
watches with beating heart the procession taking her to her new
mother-in-law, who can make of her future home a prison or a palace of
love. When she finally arrives at the house, that is decorated with red
hangings and long scrolls of red silk and flowers, both real and
artificial, she sees her husband for the first time as she steps over
the threshold. After the one quick look, they go before the ancestral
tablet, and, kneeling, touch their heads three times to the floor. Thus
she shows that she is now one of the family, worshipping her husband’s
ancestors instead of those of her own family; and after prostrating
themselves before her husband’s parents and drinking from the same cup
as a symbol of their unity, they retire to a room, where they sit upon
two red chairs and the merry-making begins. Their friends come in, and,
facing them, try to make the bride laugh, showing that she will be a
most frivolous woman. There is much music, feasting, and playing of
tricks on this joyous occasion, and for this little woman, dressed in
red satin embroidered in gold, with a big crown upon her head and
bead-fringe hanging over her face, the three days of the wedding
festivities are most wearying. But she realizes that she must enjoy them
if she can, because after they have passed she settles down into the
daughter-in-law, which too often proves to be almost the place of a
slave, or at the most a household drudge. One can imagine the discord
and strife there is within a household where there are several sons who
are married, each bringing his wife to his parents’ home. I knew a
family of grandparents, parents, and children numbering thirty-eight,
all living in one modest house. We can understand the Chinese savant
making the character for discord a roof with two women under it.

Often in a rich girl’s dowry are slave-girls, and although it is really
against the law to own slaves, it is, in fact, one of the great evils of
China. These helpless people are owned by even the poor. The mother of
my maid possessed two slave-girls whom she had bought when very young.
She treated them well, and when they grew to marriageable age expected
to find husbands for them, giving them an outfit of clothing and a small
dowry. In times of famine girls are sold for very small amounts of money
or exchanged for the more precious rice. This seems most cruel; but in
order that the rest of the family may live, one must be sacrificed. When
everything of value is sold, when the winter clothing is in the
pawnshop, when there is no rice to give to crying children, then there
is but one thing left for the despairing mother, she must sell her
daughter. Chinese mothers are the same as mothers from all over the
world, and she only parts with her little girl as a last resort, to the
merchants who follow the disasters and fatten on the misery of the
Chinese peasant. When it has become known that a famine has made
desperate the poor of a province, the merchants from the tea-houses and
the brothels of the great cities go to the little towns and villages in
the track of the famine, and buy the girls from the fathers and mothers,
who can see nothing but death ahead for all unless they sacrifice one.
The clever, pretty girls are trained for the tea-houses, inmates of
brothels, or concubines of rich men. The ugly, stupid ones are
domestics, and often are most cruelly treated.

The owners prefer buying the girl very young, from five to seven years
of age, when she can be more easily trained. If she is a pretty girl,
her feet must be bound, and if this is a cruel operation under the
tender hands of a mother, how much more dreadful it may become when
attended to by some one whose only thought is to profit by the girl’s
beauty!

The slaves in a rich family fare very well. Each child is given one or
two personal servants, and when the children grow up and marry they
follow them to the new home. Often a pretty, attractive slave-girl
becomes the secondary wife of her master, and if she should be so
fortunate as to bear him sons, she ranks with her mistress in the honour
given her within the household.

There is a home in Shanghai for the rescue of little girls whose
mistresses are more than ordinarily cruel. There is also a branch of the
Florence Crittenden work for the rescue of girls sold to tea-houses. It
is very hard for the people who are engaged in this good work to obtain
the girls unless they are so badly treated that it comes to the notice
of the magistrate, who may send the girl to the home for a given period.

I saw a pitiful case at a hospital at Soochow. We were sitting in the
clinic when a very pretty woman came in and threw herself on her knees
before the doctor and began to cry. She said between her sobs: “Oh,
foreign doctor, help me to get away, help me, help me!” She was a
respectable girl from Ningpo who had been sold by her husband to a place
in Soochow for four years. She loathed the life, and when for the first
time she had eluded the old woman who always goes out with these
unfortunates to see that they do not get away, she had appealed to the
only hope she knew. Yet that appeal was useless, as nothing could be
done for her. She was nothing but a chattel of her husband, according to
Chinese law, and he had a perfect right to sell her if he wished. I saw
another pretty girl of sixteen who had been sold for eighty dollars to
the same place. She came to the hospital to have her back treated, as
she had been severely beaten with a brick because she would not make
herself sufficiently pleasing to a guest.

But the average Chinese girl goes to her husband’s home quite likely
within a short distance of her girlhood village, and passes a most
uneventful life, one day being exactly like another unless broken by the
ceremonies attending the births, weddings, and deaths of her husband’s
people. Every village is surrounded by trees and is exactly like its
neighbour, with its one-story, thatched-roof houses, or, perhaps, if the
owner is especially prosperous, the pointed roofs may be formed of
blue-grey tiling. Part of the front yard is beaten and made smooth to be
used for threshing the rice, the front room of the house is used for the
storing of the farming implements, and the other rooms are given to the
different members of the family according to their needs. There is no
light and little ventilation in these rude village homes. Windows are
expensive and cold, as the houses are not heated in the winter. The
mothers may be seen sitting in their doorways, holding in their hands
brass hand-warmers, in which are a few burning coals of charcoal, and
under their feet are the braziers which provide the only heat for these
poor people during the cold months of the year.

[Illustration:

  RAIN-COATS OF CHINESE WORKMEN.

  To face p. 246.]

The life lived by these village people is life reduced to its simplest
form. The main food is rice and a little cabbage. Meat is an unknown
quantity unless on special feast days. Beef is not used, as the cow is a
beast of burden, and the Chinese have the same feeling in regard to its
flesh that we have for the flesh of horses. Ducks, chicken, eggs, fish,
crabs, snails, and clams are the poor man’s luxuries. No hole is too
muddy nor water too filthy for a fish-net to be drawn across it, or for
the little crowd of boys who catch the crabs to help fill the family
pot.

The question of clothes is a simple one and easily solved. The father
wears a pair of blue cotton trousers in the summer, while the mother
wears the same style garment with the addition of an apron effect which
covers the bust. An amulet and a string are sufficient clothing for the
children during the warm days, but when winter comes the wadded clothing
must be brought forth, often from the pawnshop, where it goes in the
spring to obtain money to buy the seed for planting.

The great prayer which rises from the heart of all Chinese women, rich
and poor, peasant and princess, is to Kwan-yin for the inestimable
blessing of sons. “Sons, give me sons!” is heard in every temple. A
woman is not honoured until she has sons to worship at the tablets of
her husband’s ancestors. One of the chief reasons for divorce in China
is the lack of sons, and if the first wife has no male children, and the
secondary wife has borne sons to her lord, the lot of the first wife is
very bitter. In one of the foreign hospitals in Shanghai for Chinese
women, the wife of an official in Tientsin gave birth, much to her
sorrow, to a girl. She was inconsolable, and would not allow the
dreadful news to be sent to her home, and the doctors feared that she
would take her life. But through a servant the unhappy woman saw a way
to regain the love and respect of her family. At the same time that the
daughter was born to her a beggar-woman in the charity department gave
birth to a boy. She bought the boy and telegraphed her husband, “Thou
art the father of twins.”

One of the upper servants in a consulate, growing rich on the foreign
spoils, took to himself a second wife, giving as his excuse that he had
four daughters and no sons. At the birth of a son to the new wife the
first wife tried to starve herself to death, and failing that, took
opium and gained her wish. She could not survive the ignominy of being
only the mother of girls.

Sons mean so much to a Chinese mother that she feels that the gods must
be jealous of her happiness, consequently she puts an ear-ring in one
ear of her boy to deceive the god and make him think the loved one is a
girl. She also calls him her “ugly one,” her “stupid one,” or simply
gives him a number so the gods will not see how much he is loved and
covet her treasure. There is an economic reason behind all this love for
the man-child. A poor Chinese, a workman, cannot save enough money to
provide for even his simple wants in his old age. Try as he may, he can
only earn enough to live upon from day to day, but if he has sons he
knows that when old age comes, and he can no longer work, that care will
be given him and he will not want. There is no crime so great as the
lack of filial piety, and the State punishes severely the son who does
not provide for his aged parents. Indeed, of the five punishments of the
criminal code directed against three thousand offences, disobedience or
neglect of parents is the most severe.

An illustration of this occurred not long ago in the interior of China.
A man arose in the night at the sound of a burglar, and in the struggle
in the dark the robber was killed. On bringing a light it was found that
the robber was the father of the man whose house he entered. He was
known to be a ne’er-do-well, but the unparalleled act of killing one’s
own father aroused intense excitement in the whole province. The case
was deemed of such importance that it could not be tried by the local
magistrate, but it was transferred to the courts in Peking, which
condemned the man to death, not because he killed the robber, but
because his father had evidently been compelled to rob for a living.

Another similar case came to the notice of the foreigners in Shanghai. A
man accidentally hit his father with a hoe, causing his death. The whole
village took the man to the city, but while on the road they met the
magistrate, who asked them not to bring the dreadful case before him
officially, but for the clan or village to mete out the punishment and
then report to him. They buried the son alive.

Missionaries from a town in the interior asked the American Consul to
intervene in the case of a boy nine years old, who, while in play,
allowed a stool accidentally to slip from his hand, hitting his mother
on the head and killing her. He was condemned to death, but because of
his youth was to be kept in prison until he was sixteen, when he would
pay the penalty. The Consul did all in his power to save the boy, but,
outside of friendly arguments, nothing could be done, as he was a
Chinese subject and came under the jurisdiction of Chinese courts of
law.

Because of this necessity for the provision for the old age of parents,
there are no homes for the aged nor houses for the poor in China, unless
one excepts those established through foreign influence. Each family
must take care of its own helpless, and if a person is so unfortunate as
to have no family, the begging-bowl by the roadside is the only recourse
when the years are many and the once strong arms are weak.

The filial piety and respect for parents that are so strongly entrenched
in the Chinese character causes the son to obey his father until the day
of his death. I know a man fifty years of age who was offered the post
of secretary of the Embassy in London, but who declined this very
advantageous position because his mother did not want him to go to a
foreign land. He gave up willingly the chance of a lifetime rather than
cause sorrow to his mother in her old age.

A mission in a certain town was very desirous of buying a certain piece
of ground on which to erect a church, and the plan was balked by the
local official. The missionary conducting the negotiations could find no
suitable reason for the official’s action in the matter, and finally
asked the help of his consul. The taotai was firm in his refusal, and
offered the mission land in another part of the city for their church.
When pressed for a reason for his refusal he finally said: “My mother
passes that place each time she goes to her favourite temple, and she
objects to a building holding a foreign god being erected there. She
thinks it would pollute the good spirits of the air. I know it is what
you call superstition, but she is my mother and I must obey her wishes.”

Family life has been from time immemorial the foundation-stone of the
Chinese Empire, and filial piety is the foundation-stone of the family
life. The Chinese is taught that the interest of the family is always of
greater importance than the interest of the individual. This respect and
veneration is not only for the living, but also for the dead. The death
days of two generations of parents are kept sacred with solemn rites,
and every home has its family shrine, to which all the members must pay
due reverence.

This respect and worship is paid by the woman to the ancestors of her
husband’s family, as it is her destiny on reaching womanhood to go to a
new home and live in submission to her new parents, and burn incense
before the shrines of her husband’s people. When she marries she
practically leaves her home for ever. If she is returned to it—that is,
if she is divorced—“shame shall cover her to her latest hour.” Divorce
is very rare in China, but there are seven reasons given for divorcing a
wife. The first is disobedience to father- or mother-in-law, barrenness,
lewdness, leprosy, overmuch talking, and stealing.

The woman is taught that her lifelong duty is obedience. Her husband
must be looked upon as “heaven itself,” and she must pay all outward
respect to his parents. Her first duty each morning is to bring a cup of
tea to the bedside of her husband’s mother, and to bow her head before
her as a sign of submission and respect. She is taught that the only
qualities that benefit a woman are gentle obedience, chastity,
quietness, and mercy, and that the five worst infirmities that may
afflict a female are indocility, discontent, slander, jealousy, and
silliness. Confucius says: “These five vices are found in seven or eight
out of every ten women, and it is from these that arise the inferiority
of the sex.”

Generations of this teaching has made the Chinese woman into a modest,
quiet, lovable woman, to be protected and cared for, appealing to all
that is chivalrous in her menfolk, her very weakness her greatest
strength.




                              CHAPTER XVI
                         WHEN CHINESE WOMEN DIE


In a country where the worship of ancestors plays such an important part
in the religion, death has a greater meaning than it has for those of
Western lands. The Chinese spend far too much upon the ceremonies
connected with death, rich and poor alike vying with each other in the
elaborate arrangements for the disposal of their dead. I met not long
ago the funeral procession accompanying the body of a captain of labour
to his last resting-place. He was many times a millionaire, who began
life as a boatman. The sons boasted that they spent twenty thousand
dollars on his funeral. There were eight native bands in the procession,
led by the European band of Shanghai, twenty men carrying banners and
umbrellas, about fifty men carrying scrolls, on which were written the
name and rank of the deceased; there were over two hundred Buddhist
priests, dressed in their sackcloth robes, and the wailing mourners and
friends in their mourning clothes of white, followed in sedan-chairs and
carriages. The enormous coffin was covered with red embroidered satin
and carried by thirty chanting coolies. Within the home the walls were
covered with white, and there were long scrolls from friends telling of
their sympathy and of the greatness of the deceased family. At twenty
tables, seating eight each, feasting was carried on day and night for a
week.

In the summer-time there are hundreds of deaths, and the funerals of the
poor pass our house daily. They are very different from the elaborate
processions of the rich men. The coffins, instead of being made of the
finest teak or heaviest ebony, are nothing but plain, rough boxes, and
the mourners either are on wheelbarrows or they walk to the place of the
dead, the weeping wife being supported on each side by a friend, who
practically carries her as she stumbles along in her grief. Paper money
is always scattered in front of the corpse in order to pay his way into
the new world; and often one sees either a live rooster or an imitation
one standing on the coffin to bring back to his home one of the man’s
three souls.

The body is often kept months within the houses before a suitable day is
found by the necromancer on which to bury him, but because of the manner
of preparing for burial it is not insanitary to keep a corpse in the
house for a few months. The coffins are made of hardwood of four or five
inches in thickness. First a certain number of bags of lime are placed
in the bottom, varying according to the weight of the person; over that
is laid a wadded blanket, if of a rich family it is of silk and often
embroidered, if the person be poor it is only cotton; the body is laid
in the coffin, dressed in as handsome a suit of wadded clothing as is
consistent with the means of the family; the ancestral tablet is laid
upon the breast, paper money at the feet; he is covered with the blanket
and the coffin hermetically sealed. The coffin is the most precious
possession of the Chinese, and is often purchased years before death in
order that they may be sure of a dignified last resting-place.

We often hear stories told at women’s clubs of mothers who throw babies
within the “baby tower” to die. These baby towers are small, round
houses, situated on the outskirts of a city or a village for the purpose
of permitting the poor to dispose of their dead children without the
expense of a coffin or a funeral. The interior of the house is partially
filled with quicklime, and a small door opening on to a slanting chute
permits the poor mother to give her baby its final resting-place. I have
never heard of a case of a live baby being sent to these baby towers, as
I found that a mother’s heart is the same all over the world. My cook
came to me one morning with his eyes red from weeping. I asked him the
cause of his sorrow, and he told me that his three-months-old baby had
died the evening before. He had no money with which to pay for its
burial, so in the night, when the mother had at last fallen into a
sleep, he softly arose and, wrapping the tiny body in a blanket, had
laid it upon the table with twenty cents beside it in order that the
garbage-man who came in the early morning might take it to the baby
tower outside the city. I said to him: “But, cook, why did you not bury
it properly? Does not your wife feel very badly?” He shook his head
sorrowfully, and said: “Yes, she too muchee cry, but what can we do? We
must buy rice for live babies.” That is the great secret of the stoicism
of the Chinese race. They must buy rice for the living, and what often
seems to us as heartlessness and cruelty is simply the effect of the
great economic pressure in a land where millions are on the verge of
starvation, and where the lack of a day’s work means the lack of a day’s
food.

In times of great epidemics rich Chinese and the guilds or clubs of
different forms of industry, such as the Bankers’ Guild, the Tea Guild,
or the Goldsmiths’ Guild, provide coffins for the burial of the poor,
and in times of famine these same guilds are most generous to their less
fortunate brothers. Near Soochow is a tomb of a man who gave his entire
fortune to relieving the wants of the people of his province during a
time of famine. He is buried in the most picturesque spot in the hills,
the road to which is bordered by a great many enormous boulders that
rise straight up from the ground. The Chinese say that these stones
stood up to show their respect for the great man when his body was
carried to its last resting-place and that they are waiting his commands
to lie down again.

The dead are buried on the family estate; if there is not room for all,
a spot is leased from a neighbour. The interment is not beneath the
surface except in a few provinces; the coffin is set on the ground and
the dirt is heaped over it. Sometimes the fields are so thickly covered
with mounds that there is little room left for cultivation. Especially
is this so in the country around Shanghai, which looks to the casual
passer-by like one vast graveyard. Funeral expenses for parents are the
most sacred of obligations, and it is not uncommon for the sons to part
with everything they have in the world in order to render proper respect
to the memory of their parents. A son is supposed to mourn three years
for his father, during which time all occupation is to cease. In the
case of a son holding an important official position, he often has to
resign his post during the period of mourning, or else be called
unfilial. Strict mourning for the mother only lasts three months,
otherwise the same honour is paid her memory as given to the head of the
household.

When a woman is left a widow, she often vows that she will not remarry,
and she spends her life in pious acts that cause her village or her clan
at her death to erect a memorial to her honour. This is generally in the
form of an arch, built of stone and erected near her village. In the
country districts one can see many of these concrete evidences of the
respect which the Chinese have for loyal womanhood.




                              CHAPTER XVII
                             CHANGING CHINA


China is changing so rapidly, and is becoming so thoroughly Westernized,
especially in the ports where the Chinese come in contact with the
foreigner, that she can scarcely be recognized by her old-time friends.
We all admit that the change is for the better so far as the nation is
concerned, but whether it makes for the individual good is another and
more serious question. China is flooded with foreign adventurers who
want her untouched wealth, and who have cast their greedy eyes upon her
mines of coal and iron and gold. These foreigners from all classes and
grades of society have brought dishonesty and corruption in business
dealings to the merchant of China, whose word in the old time was as
good as his bond. In those days when a Chinaman said, “Can putee book,”
it was known that the contract was settled and that he would live up to
his spoken word, whether it meant loss or profit to him. But when
dealing with the foreigner the Chinese found that there were no old-time
customs to bind the merchant from over the seas, except those of bond
and written agreement. If he had any traditions of honour, he evidently
left them in the homeland, as nothing less than a court of law would
hold him to his contract if it seemed expedient for him to break it.

[Illustration:

  RICE-BOATS ON CANAL, CHINA.

  To face p. 260.]

For years the word “China” meant to the adventurer of other lands a
place for exploitation, where money was to be obtained easily by the man
with fluent tongue and winning ways. Even foreign officials did not
scruple to use their influence to enter trade. In one of the great
inland cities there was no water nearer than a river several miles away.
A foreign official, boring an artesian well upon his place and finding
pure, clear water, conceived the idea of boring wells throughout the
city and bringing water to the doors of the half-million of people who
resided in its narrow streets. He interested the officials and raised a
sum of money, and to doubly assure the Chinese that their money was safe
he signed the contracts, not only with his name but affixed to them the
great seal of his Government. After a few months’ trip to his homelands,
and a few aimless borings in the earth in search of the water that never
came, he relinquished the project, but not the money, and the officials
could do nothing but gaze sadly into the great holes that had taken
their silver. They learned that wisdom comes with experience and now put
into practice the proverb: “When a man has been burned once with hot
soup, he for ever afterwards blows upon cold rice.”

Another case in which the Chinese officials were duped by clever-tongued
foreigners was in Ningpo. Three Americans visited that city and talked
long and loud of the dark streets, the continual fires caused by the
flickering lamps of oil that were being constantly overturned by the
many children. They showed the officials the benefits of electricity,
that a light upon each corner would make it impossible for robbers and
evildoers to carry on their work, which must be done in darkness. They
promised to turn night into day, to give poor as well as rich the
incandescent lamp at no greater cost than the bean-oil wick. They were
most plausible, and raised thirty thousand dollars as contract money.
They left, ostensibly to buy machinery; the years have passed; they
never have returned. Ningpo still has streets of darkness, men still
walk abroad with lighted lanterns, the lamp is seen within the cottage,
and will continue to be quite likely until the hills shall fade, if
electricity depends upon the officials who once dreamed dreams of a city
lit by a light from Western lands.

This is one of the most serious handicaps of the missionary in trying to
Christianize China. The dissolute white man is in every port,
manifesting a lust, greed, and brutality which the Chinese, who are
accustomed to associate the citizenship of a person with his religion,
attribute to Christianity. It is no wonder that it is hard for the
missionary to make converts among the people who have business dealings
with men from Christian nations.

But there are other questions besides those of business integrity
vitally affecting the Chinese youth to-day. Along with the slight
knowledge which they have obtained of the manners and customs of the
Western world, they have absorbed many of its vices. With their
rose-wine and their samshu the Chinese boy has learned to drink
champagne and brandy. I know the father of five sons who told me that he
would give all that he possessed in the world if he had not brought
those sons to Shanghai.

Change is now the order of the day in China, educationally as well as
politically. We do not hear the children shouting their tasks at the top
of their little voices, nor do they learn by heart the thirteen
classics. The simple schoolroom, with hard benches and earthen floor,
with a faint light striking through the unglazed windows, is no more.
The old-time examinations at Peking have gone, the degrees which have
been the nation’s pride have been abolished, the subjects of study in
the schools have been completely changed. The privileges which were once
given the scholars, the social and political offices which were once
open to the winners of the highest prizes, have been thrown upon the
altar of modernity. The faults of the old system of education lay in the
stress it placed upon the memorizing of the many books whose contents
were not always understood by the young mind, and in the lack of
original ideas that might be expressed by a student, who must give the
usual interpretation of the classics. Now the introduction of free
thought and private opinion has produced an upheaval in the minds of
China’s young men, and they say what they think, even trying to show
that Confucius was at heart a staunch Republican, and that Mencius only
thinly veiled his sentiments of modern philosophy. It is generally
conceded that the newer education leads to the greater individualism
which is now the battle-cry of China.

The Chinese, both men and women, are reaching out eager hands to obtain
for themselves the knowledge that is being brought from other lands. Yet
this thirst for education is not a newly acquired virtue, for in no
country is real learning held in higher esteem than in China. It is the
greatest characteristic of the nation that in every grade of society
education is considered above all else. As a race they have devoted
themselves to the cultivation of literature for a longer period by some
thousands of years than any existing nation. To literature, and to it
alone, they look for the rule to guide them in their conduct. To them
all writing is sacred, and the very symbols and materials used in the
making of the written character have become objects of veneration. Even
the smallest village is provided with a scrap-box, into which every bit
of paper containing printed or written words is carefully placed, to
await a suitable occasion when it may be burned.

The mission schools have been the pioneers in the education of the young
people of China, and if the teaching of Christianity has not as yet made
many converts, the effect has been great in the spread of higher ideals
of education, and much of the credit of the progress of the modern life
of China to-day must be given to the mission schools, which have opened
new pathways in the field of learning and caused the youth of China to
demand a higher system of education throughout the land.

It is said that practically all the officials in the new China are men
who have been educated abroad or who have been in one of the many
mission schools scattered throughout the country. They are the ones who
have taken what they have learned of foreign lands and adapted it to the
needs of their country; but there are others who have been abroad only
long enough to acquire the veneer of Western education, and they are the
young men who become the discontented ones of China.

When Chinese boys go to a foreign land they have many difficulties to
overcome. They must receive their information and instruction in a
language not their mother tongue. They have small chance to finish their
education by practical work in bank or shop or factory. They get a mass
of book knowledge and little opportunity to practise the theories that
they learn, and they are not clever enough to understand that their
textbook knowledge is nearly all foreign to their country and to the
temperament of their race. When they return to their home they often
find that they have grown out of touch with their people’s ways and
customs. They come back looking for employment, for a chance to use
their new-found knowledge; but they feel that they should begin at the
top of the ladder instead of working up slowly rung by rung, as their
fathers did before them. They feel that they are entitled to be masters,
not realizing that even with this wonderful foreign education acquired,
experience is necessary to make them leaders of great enterprises or of
men. It is these boys who are the teashop orators and preach the
Socialistic dogma for which China will not be prepared for many years to
come.

The Chinese boys and girls are going too far and too fast in their
thirst for the broader knowledge and teaching of the Western world. It
is like the clothes that the Chinese girl is wearing, trying to imitate
her sisters of the Occident. She has discarded the soft, clinging silks,
the gay embroideries, the jade and flowers in her black locks, for the
straight, dark skirt, the ugly coats, and the untidy manner of dressing
the hair seen with the European women of the coast towns. These do not
become her, any more than the scientific degrees become the woman who
has been for centuries a woman of the home. We do not condemn education
for the Chinese woman any more than we entirely condemn the change in
the style of clothing; but they should both be adapted to the
individual. This new education seems to be too general, the personality
of the boy or girl being entirely left out. The youth are being made
into a set of jelly-moulds, all looking alike, all trying to be formed
upon the models brought them from England or America.

Three things should be taken into account—who the boy or girl is, where
he is, and where he is going. The mistake should not be made in China
that has been made in India—that is, the turning out of a race of
barristers and clerks from her schools. China needs technical schools
for her boys and common sense applied to the education of her girls. I
have been in a school for the education of the daughters of the better
class of Chinese, where the main accomplishment for which the girl was
applauded was her facility in rendering a piece upon the piano. I should
have said “executing” a piece upon the piano, because that is exactly
what is done when a Chinese girl attempts to interpret foreign music. It
is alien to her in every way, and generations of study will not make the
Chinese maiden a musician in the foreign sense, nor will they really
care for the foreign music. These girls who have wasted so many hours in
the practise of the piano will go to homes where they cannot have a
piano, or if they did have one they would be the only persons in the
family who would appreciate its music. It would be a conglomeration of
bad sounds to father, mother, husband. Many feel that the young girls
would be better employed in learning a musical instrument understood and
appreciated by her people and one that would give pleasure to her
husband at night, and perhaps be a factor in keeping him from the
tea-house, and the singing girls who have a monopoly of the musical
talent of China.

Another thing that causes sorrow to the conservative fathers and mothers
is the fact that as soon as their children receive a smattering of the
Western civilization they immediately begin to scoff at their own modes
of acquiring knowledge and the text-books which have trained their
people’s minds for so many years. They become proud of the fact that
they know nothing of the classics, and they quote Shelley, Byron, Burns,
and Browning instead of their own beautiful poets. But, what is more
serious for the youth of this Eastern land, this worldly knowledge seems
to have freed his intelligence without teaching him self-control, and it
has taken him away from the gods of his fathers without replacing them
with others. He, like his cousin of Japan, is inclined to become
agnostic and say, “There are no gods.”

Whether the religion from the West is the religion best suited for the
Oriental we cannot say, but whatever he receives from us must be adapted
to fit the needs and conditions of his race and country. China must
raise up leaders from her own people, both men and women, as her
regeneration will come from within, not without. More and more the West
must see that the East and the West may meet, but they can never mingle.
Foreigners can never enter the inner door of Chinese thought or feeling.
The door is never wholly opened, the curtain never quite drawn aside
between the two races. They are unlike in almost every characteristic.
The Westerner is much more a materialist than is the cultured man of
China. To him the taste of the tea is not so important as the aroma, and
the acquiring of wealth and honours is not so much to be desired as is
the ability to live the leisured life, the life of thought and
meditation, when he may sit apart from the noise and cares of the
present day.

The rush and worry of the Western world seem to have penetrated even to
the women’s courtyard, and there is no doubt that the new China will be
Westernized in every department of her being. But we who love China hope
that she will not change too rapidly, that she will take what is
necessary for her happiness from the knowledge and the mode of life of
the Occident, but that she will touch it with her own individuality,
making it a real part of her and not simply becoming an imitation of the
alien people by whom she is surrounded.

There is a charm about old China, and there is more than a charm about
the old-time secluded Chinese women, who have been protected and guarded
from life’s worries and battles, until they represent all that is most
beautiful and feminine and demand the chivalry of the men of the world.

Let the West come to China with all its modern inventions and its
politics and educational policies, but let us always be able to find
within its quiet courtyards the quiet, sweet-faced woman of China.




                             CHAPTER XVIII
                         JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME


I have been eight times to Japan, living in the big European hotels in
Yokohama, Tokio, Kobe, and Nagasaki, stopping for days at a time in the
native inns in the interior, or visiting at the homes of friends. I
decided that my ninth trip to the little island would be different;
consequently we planned a few months’ stay in some out-of-the-way place
where we could keep house and live _à la Japonaise_. We had heard of the
beauties of Hakodate, the most northern port of any size in Japan, and
obtaining a letter to the American Consul, we wrote him asking if it
were possible for him to find us a furnished Japanese house for the
summer months. We were delighted to hear a few days later that he had
found a place for us, the summer home of a rich merchant, situated on
the mountain-side, overlooking the sea, and surrounded by giant
cryptomerias and pines. Needless to say, we were soon on our way to this
paradise.

There were only four berths in the sleeping-car on the Northern Express,
and we engaged two, but were not given the opportunity of using them. At
one of the stations a prince with his retinue came on the train and
pre-empted the entire car. He used only one of the berths, as no one
could sleep over him, nor evidently near him, and on all the long
journey he selfishly occupied the room by himself, while we, in company
with the half-dozen men composing his suite, had to fit ourselves into a
tiny compartment that should have only accommodated four. The men
removed their elaborate outer robes, curled themselves into comfortable
positions, and smoked and chatted or slept until a station of any
importance was neared, when they donned their gowns, threw around their
necks a long, stiff piece of silk on which was embroidered the Imperial
chrysanthemum, and prepared to receive the delegation of townspeople who
were always at the station to present an address to his Imperial
Highness, or to send in an elaborate meal, served on beautifully
lacquered trays.

I had a good look at the prince on his entrance, and found him exactly
like the representations of the daimios of olden times that we see on
the fans and tea-boxes. He had the long, slim, pale face of the
aristocrat, absolutely different from the round-faced Japanese who
comprise the greatest proportion of the island’s population. He looked
as if he might almost belong to another race. I was told by one of his
men that he represented to many thousands of the people a god, as in his
branch of the family a certain godhead had descended from father to son.
When the train stopped for any length of time at a station, the people
came in crowds and knelt, touching their heads to the ground, and one
old lady kept bowing and holding up her hands, with the tears streaming
down her face at the joy of beholding so great a divinity. He looked at
them without seeing them at all, never showing by any motion or sign
that there was anything to be seen except the distant hills. I do not
see how it was possible for any human being to look so thoroughly
impersonal at a crowd of bowing, worshipping people, when he knew he was
the object of all the adoration. Yet he looked at them as if their faces
were windows and their back hair the landscape.

Train travel is interesting in Japan, if one will travel in the ordinary
day coach and watch the people. The Japanese are great travellers, and
the clack-clack of their wooden clogs makes a deafening noise at the
stations, especially on the bridges leading over the tracks. One sees
whole families going for an outing or on a visit to a distant relative.
They come on the train with bundles and packages—most mysterious things
done up in large squares of cloth. They drop their shoes before the seat
and curl their feet under them, and proceed thoroughly to enjoy
themselves. The seats run lengthwise of the cars, and often a little
woman gets tired of looking out of the windows or at her
fellow-passengers opposite, and, turning her back on the car and sitting
practically upright, will lean her face against the side of the window
and go to sleep. The manner in which they can sit upon their feet for
hours impresses a foreigner. At the larger stations tea in tiny pots,
with a little porcelain cup, is brought in by the salesmen, and “bento,”
the lunch of cold rice, pickles, and fish of some description, is sold
in neat boxes, the dainty lunch only costing ten cents, including a pair
of new wooden chopsticks. The Japanese masses, like their prototypes
everywhere, enjoy eating in public, and the car is filled with the
divers and sundry odours of fruit, sweets, tea, and food. They are not
noisy, and always most polite, and because of the dainty clothes of the
women and children, and the variety of their colouring, a few hours can
be spent quite well in studying travelling Japanese close at hand. At
one station a party of pilgrims came on, dressed in white. They belonged
to some club in a far northern village whose members paid a small
assessment each week, and each year lots were chosen to judge who should
benefit by the annual pilgrimage to some famous shrine or to Mount Fuji.
The lucky winners in the lottery joined other pilgrims, donned the
pilgrim’s dress, and under the direction of a guide made the one great
visit of their lives, the wonders of which they would be able to tell
their amazed neighbours when they returned. These would listen with
interest, as it might be their good fortune to draw the lucky number the
coming year.

At the end of our long train ride, Amorri, we went on the small boat
bound for Hakodate, where we were met by the Consul, a jolly, big,
whole-hearted man, who took us, metaphorically speaking, at once to his
bosom and became as a long-lost brother. His wife, much to our surprise,
was a tiny little Japanese woman, no bigger than a good-sized doll, and
as pretty as a picture. They looked so incongruous together that one was
inclined to smile. He weighed at least 250 lb., was over six feet tall;
and I should think that when dressed in all her finery, Mrs. Consul
might have weighed 85 lb. She was a well-educated, well-informed little
woman, who needed all her charm and tact to keep her unruly family in
order. It was a big one, the last, a boy, being the pride of the
father’s heart, and as nearly spoiled as the clever mother would allow
him to be by his worshipping father. When I knew them better it was a
joy to me to see how she managed these children. The father, who had
been at one time captain of a sailing vessel, always spoke to them as if
they were at the top of a mast on a wintry night with a cyclone blowing.
Tommy, the irrepressible, would get up on the window seat, and his
father would hail him in a voice that could be heard by the boats coming
from Kamschatka: “Tommy, get out of that window seat; you’ll break your
neck.” Tommy would not move; again his father’s stentorian tone would
offend the evening air. The quiet little mother would turn and give a
nod of her pretty head to Tommy, and Tommy would immediately climb down
from his perch and proceed to behave himself as young boys should.

The Consulate was partly foreign and partly Japanese, and the children
while at home in the morning dressed in kimona and wooden clogs, but in
the afternoon they were gay in “home” dresses and resplendent in hair
ribbons, only showing by the little turn of the eyes that they were
members of their mother’s race.

[Illustration:

  JAPANESE CHILDREN PLAYING.

  To face p. 276.]

Soon after our arrival we went to see the place that was to be our home
for the next few months. We did not see the house until we came to the
great gateway with its pointed roof leading into a path shaded by giant
cryptomerias, completely guarding the house from view of the passer-by.
This hillside garden contained about five acres of land, in which were
winding pathways, giant pine-trees, terraces of flowers, and here and
there a tori, a huge bronze stork, a grim stone lantern, or a calmly
reposing Buddha to show us we were in the land of Nippon. We looked out
over the northern ocean, dotted here and there with the sails of
fishing-boats, or saw the smoke of a steamer coming from Kamschatka,
Saghlain, or some of those mysterious northern ports, the names of which
were only places on a map. After listening for awhile to the murmur of
the surf, we visited the interior of the house, which contained five
rooms. The furniture consisted of the matting on the floor, the sliding
“shojis,” the fire-boxes, the cooking utensils, and dishes for the
serving of the meals. It was necessary for us to buy our “futons”—that
is, our bedding; but otherwise the home was completely furnished _à la
Japonaise_. The servant problem was easily solved, as the daughter of
the gardener wished to be our maid, the gardener would run our errands,
and his wife would be the general superintendent of the place. I
expected to do the cooking, as the time would be too short in Hakodate
to train a man in matters culinary. We were soon installed, and then
passed pleasant days in _dolce far niente_, spending our mornings in
trips to the seashore, watching the fishermen come in with their
boatloads of squids. Their arrival was the signal for all the women and
children of the village to flock to the shore and unload the boats,
then, after cleaning and pressing these ugly fish, hang them upon lines
to dry, making the whole ocean front as far as the eye could see a
miniature wash-Monday. We were not allowed to climb the mountain-sides
except to a certain distance, as the hills were heavily fortified, and
at sudden turns we were met by great signs which stated plainly in
English, French, German, Japanese, and Russian that further explorations
were forbidden. We never tried to disobey the laws in Japan, as these
little people are vigorous in their punishment of offenders, to whatever
race they may belong, and I feel that they have been justified in
upholding the manhood of their people. In India and in China you see the
white man treat the native with barbarous cruelty. While travelling once
in India our servant was making up the bed in the compartment we had
engaged on the train. A white man entered, and without one word of
explanation, grabbed our man and beat and kicked him and nearly threw
him out of the car. In reply to our indignant demands as to the cause of
his ill-treatment of our servant, he said that he thought the man had
made a mistake in the berth and was taking one for which he had paid. I
said afterward to Ali, “Why did you not strike him when he treated you
so brutally?” Ali replied: “Oh, mem-sahib, he was a white man. If I had
touched him I would have lain many long days in prison.” In China also,
on one hot day in August I saw a rickshaw coolie, naked to the waist,
with the perspiration running down his face in streams, running swiftly
with a heavy man inside his two-wheeled carriage. In passing by a
crowded corner, he brushed against a white man, who was having his
afternoon stroll. The white man angrily turned, and, grabbing the coolie
by his hair, beat him across his bare back with his cane until he
stopped from sheer exhaustion. The panting, perspiring coolie was
helpless as he could not drop the shafts, and so was compelled to take
the punishment. His patron in the carriage, a richly-dressed Chinese,
dared not interfere because he also was a native and understood there
was no court of justice when it was a question of a white man’s word
against that of the yellow man. They have a saying in China, that when a
Chinese walks along the sidewalk of his own city of Shanghai, he is
pushed into the middle of the road by the American, who only laughs at
him, by the Englishman, who swears at him, and by the German, who kicks
him, but—he is pushed into the middle of the road. This could not happen
in Japan, as the Japanese courts punish severely any one who dares to
lay his hand in violence upon a Japanese, however lowly may be his
station or however strong may be the provocation. While we were in
Yokohama, an officer of an American ship had his hand severely hurt
through the carelessness of a Japanese longshoreman. In his pain and
first flush of anger he knocked the Japanese down, and for his
impatience was compelled to remain six months in jail. His captain and
his Consul tried their best to help him, but it was in vain, and he saw
his ship sail away without him.

I came very near sharing his fate while in Hakodate. The fisherman came
to our doors each morning with his enormous baskets of fish swung over
his shoulders. The maid, her mother, and myself, spent many interesting
moments in turning over the scaly contents of his baskets in order to
make our choice amongst the varied assortment he had for sale. I paid
him by the week, and one morning was called to the kitchen by an
indignant maid, who said the fisherman had greatly overcharged me. The
amount was far too small, it seemed to me, to cause such keen
excitement, and I intended to dismiss the man, saying I would pay him,
but employ him no more. I went over to a bucket of water, and taking up
the long-handled dipper to take a drink, and not noticing that it was
broken, I gave it a little shake toward the fisherman, and said, “Oh, go
away, and don’t make so much noise.” The cup part of the dipper flew off
and hit the indignant fisherman in the eye, whereupon he immediately
shouldered his baskets and started for the magistrate. Needless to say,
I was frightened, and I immediately donned my bonnet and started for the
Consulate. The Consul heard my story and sadly shook his head: “If you
really hit that coolie and he has you arrested, I can do nothing. It
will only make matters worse to have me to interfere, so the best thing
for you to do is to go with me and find that fisherman; offer him half
of your estate, but don’t get mixed up with the law in Japan.” For two
hours we haunted side-streets, where at last we found our man, and,
after a small money payment and a promise to take fish from him for the
rest of the season, and practically binding myself to listen to his
insolence as long as I was in Hakodate, he grudgingly assented to
withdraw his charge.

These itinerant dealers make housekeeping in Japan easy. Men clad in
blue cotton coats with great straw hats on their heads and baskets piled
high with vegetables, come to the door each morning; one passing along
the streets both night and day can hear the cries of the travelling
vendors, selling all that the average householder may require.

Hakodate is filled with crows—monstrous, black, impertinent thieves, who
will come boldly into the kitchen and take the fish from out the
frying-pan. Mornings I would take a pan of corn, and in the rear of the
house upon the hillside, and hitting upon the pan’s side with a spoon,
would soon be surrounded by hundreds of these beady-eyed birds, that are
almost considered sacred in this province. They were so tame that they
would fight at my feet for the kernels, and I would be compelled to push
them from my lap and then, much to the maid’s disgust, the greedy birds
would follow me into the house.

We used to play a game, the crows and I. I would pound on the pan until
I had summoned fifty or sixty, then I would start the song, “Onward,
Christian Soldiers,” and rapping on the pan for accompaniment, would
march solemnly at the head of my serious, expectant army, up hill and
down dale, through the house, out again, down the small paths, until
even the maid who considered the crows her enemies, would be compelled
to laugh.

Soon I found that if I was to live as the Japanese, I certainly should
dress in the clothes of the country, as European clothes and shoes are
not comfortable in Japanese houses. All my friends were Japanese, and I
found I must conform to their customs so far as was possible if I would
be happy and not an object of curiosity. Consequently I went with the
wife of our Consul and passed two delightful hours in choosing kimonas,
which, if I had been allowed to exercise my taste, would have been far
too gay for one of my years. I always associated kimonas with pinks and
blues and riotous colours, but I found that, being a married woman, I
must confine my choice of colours to greys and browns and soft-toned
mauves. I could indulge my love for ornamentation in the obis, as these
may be of stiff brocades in rose and gold, or purple and gold, or, in
fact, any colour one may wish. I found also that the Japanese dress
itself may not be expensive, but the price of the obis is ruinous to a
small pocketbook. It is in these last articles of adornment that the
Japanese lady spends her husband’s money. She buys obis and puts them
away in her treasure-chest, only bringing them to the light of day on
occasions of festivity. The tying of the obi is by no means a simple
process, and I could never learn its intricacies. The end must be of a
certain length, the big bow must be just so correctly arranged or else
it shows that one is not _à la mode_. My friends were always lengthening
an end or tying a little tighter the roll that gave the obi the correct
tilt at the back. I found it necessary to practise privately for several
days walking in the clogs before I dared try them in public. The
Japanese have three kinds of clogs—high ones raised by two pieces of
wood three or four inches from the ground and with a piece of leather as
a mud-guard for use in wet weather; another pair of dress clogs were
necessary, with the plain wooden sole covered with fine matting; and
still another pair of sandals, which were for use around the garden or
in places that did not necessitate rough walking. The two pieces of cord
that pass between the great and the first toe, and by which the clog is
held on the foot, compelled me to wear the Japanese sock, which is made
of white cotton, like a mitten, the great toe being separated from the
rest of the foot. These socks are short, only coming to the ankle, and
are fastened by two or three metal clasps. The shoes are never worn in
the house, always being left at the doorways, the thick cotton sole of
the stocking protecting the foot. It would be as insulting to walk on
the clean matting of a Japanese house as it would be to walk on the
snowy damask of your hostess’s dining-table. After a few falls and many
awkward movements I found the Japanese foot covering most comfortable,
the foot being absolutely free; but I soon learned that my American
stride did not conform to the close-fitting dress of the kimona, as with
it the feet should not be set apart and one should slightly “toe in” in
order that the folds of the kimona do not fly open. In one way Japanese
dress is not expensive, as the Japanese lady, whatever her rank or
wealth, does not wear jewellery—no necklaces, nor bracelets, nor
ear-rings, nor brooches; even rings are an innovation brought in with
foreigners. Her only jewels are the clasp of her obi fastener, generally
a piece of chased gold, and a couple of ornamental hairpins or a comb
for the hair.

I did not attempt the hair-dressing, as that is a most complicated
affair, and must be left to the attentions of a hair-dresser, who comes
to the homes once or twice a week and makes the elaborate coiffures that
add so much to the beauty of a Japanese face. Each age has its coiffure,
and a woman never tries to disguise her age in Japan, because by her
dress and style of hair-dressing she frankly confesses the stage she has
reached in life. There is the baby with her shaven head, then the little
queue tied on the crown; afterward the hair is cut square across the
neck, like the little dolls we see in the London shops; then when she is
ten years old the hair is divided and made into a bow knot tied with a
piece of ornamental paper. As she arrives at young ladyhood there is the
elaborate “shimada,” which in the case of the young woman is very large,
and, if Nature has not been generous, helped out with tresses bought in
the shops. The married woman has a special coiffure which grows smaller
with age, until, when she is a matron of forty, the age when the woman
of the Orient considers herself an old woman, it is quite small. If the
woman is so unfortunate as to lose her husband, she cuts her hair, and
thus shows all the world that she is a widow. The Japanese mature early,
and old age comes to them sooner than it does to people from the West. A
Japanese proverb says that man lives but fifty years, and rarely does
his span exceed seventy years. In former days old age began at fifty,
and a man then considered himself unfit for business and made over his
name and property to his son, passing the rest of his life in ease
without the cares of business. Old age is not a burden to the Japanese
woman, but is a paradise to be looked for longingly. Then she, who has
perhaps been subservient to the mother of her husband all her married
life, knows that she will be the head of her household, with her sons
and daughters ready to obey her, and, because of her age and motherhood,
respected and holding a position in life denied her as a young woman.

Many of these quiet, soft-voiced mothers of Japan were brought to call
upon me by Mrs. Consul. They taught me how to serve the tea, the
proper way of bowing, and even tried to make of me a good follower of
the Law by taking me with them to the temples and visiting shrines and
holy places. One kindly woman brought me a tablet for my
“august-spirit-dwelling,” which she placed in a tiny model of a Shinto
temple and put above the inner doorway of the hall, where I was
supposed to burn before it each morning candles and incense, and keep
the little cups for rice and water filled. I was well provided with
gods, as another friend gave me a Buddha for my household shrine, and
all the paraphernalia of service with which to worship him.

Below us on the hillside was the swagger tea-house of the town, and the
tinkle of the samisens and the singing of the pretty girls came to us
faintly until late into the night. This pretty music, mingled with the
sound of the surf upon the shore, was always the last sound we heard at
night after the maid had placed the night-light, the tobacco-box, and
the brazier for the tea at our head, and then had knelt and said
“Goodnight.” In the morning we were wakened by a softly murmured “O
Hayo,” and a tray of tea was respectfully slid across the matting to
give us strength to begin the morning’s work.

While in Hakodate I made the acquaintance of many Japanese ladies and
learned their customs and the manner of their life, which is controlled
by thoughts and ideals entirely different from those entertained by
women of the Western world. I think I much prefer the woman of the old
school, with her charming manners, her elaborate bows, and her
antiquated superstitions and beliefs, to her daughter, who, like her
sister of China, India, and Egypt, is trying too hard to wear clothes
not made for her, and to adapt customs and usages for which she is not
formed temperamentally or physically. The customs of the modern world
will come to the woman of Japan, but they must be adapted to her
conditions and not be taken _en masse_.

One of the most beautiful characteristics of the Japanese is their
reverence for old age and their intense love for children. Japan has
justly been called the baby’s paradise, and certainly in no country does
the home life so thoroughly revolve around the children as it does in
Japan. Like all Eastern women, the desire for children is the most
ardent wish of the Japanese woman’s heart. The childless wife will move
heaven and earth in her desire to gain the blessing of motherhood. She
will visit watering-places, offer prayers at temples, make long, irksome
pilgrimages, wear amulets, drink strange decoctions, and allow herself
to be imposed upon and robbed by every charlatan who claims a knowledge
that will help her gain the craving of her heart—a child. It will,
therefore, be imagined with what eagerness the arrival of a little
stranger is awaited in the home, and the happiest day in the girl-wife’s
life is the day on which they tell her she is the mother of a son.

As soon as the event takes place, a special messenger is dispatched to
notify friends and relatives while letters of announcement are sent to
those who are not so closely related in friendship to the family. All
thus notified must then make a visit to the new baby and either send or
bring with them a present. Toys or clothing, always accompanied by eggs
or a fish to bring good luck, come in great profusion, and when baby is
about thirty days old, return presents must be made to all who
remembered him at time of birth. When baby is seven days old he receives
his name, and when he is thirty-one—or if a girl, when she is
thirty-three—days old, the first important occasion of his life must be
observed. He is dressed in his best and gayest garments, and,
accompanied by members of his family, is taken to a temple and placed
under the protection of one of the Shinto deities, who is supposed to
become the guardian of the child through life. This is a day for
present-giving also, and one especial gift must come to the child, a
papier mâché dog, which is always placed at the head of the child’s bed
at night as a charm against evil influences.

The infant should not walk until it is a year old; but if it is so
precocious that it commences to toddle before that time, a small bag of
rice is laid upon its back, and it is made to stumble and fall. To walk
before its first birthday is a sign that it will die young or else
become a resident of a distant land. There are many superstitions
connected with the early life of a baby. If he sucks his fingers before
he does his thumb, he will be a help to his parents in their old age. If
he crawls out of his covers at night, he will rise in the world, but if
he snuggles down in the bed and is inclined to crawl towards the foot,
it augurs that a downward course is his fate in life. If many of the
children of a family have died in infancy, the nervous mother will make
for this last gift of the gods a dress composed of thirty-three pieces
of cloth collected from thirty-three different families, or she will
shave his head until he is seven years old, or give him a girl’s name
instead of a boy’s, thus deceiving the gods who covet her treasure. If
baby has prickly heat, the first egg plant of the season is hung over
the door; while suspending the empty rice-pot, still hot, over the
baby’s head for a few moments will make him immune from that affliction
of childhood, the measles. It passes its days tied to the back of little
brother or sister or nurse until it can walk, then when it is two years
old the fifteenth of November is a great day for all the babies. They
are taken to the temple and the blessing of the gods is invoked, and the
priests purify their bodies by waving over them a sacred wand. This is
the occasion for showing new clothes and calling upon all friends, who
make presents to the child.

At three or four years children are sent to a kindergarten, and at six
years they enter the Primary Schools, where there is a six-years’
compulsory course for both boys and girls. Then it only rests with the
parents whether the child receives a higher education, as there are in
all towns and villages a Middle School for boys and a High School for
girls. The average girl stops her education with the Primary School, or
at most with the High School, but there is a University in Tokio where
the girl may complete her education and fit herself for a vocation. But
if she has been six years at Primary School and four years at High
School, she is sixteen years old, and of a marriageable age, although
the average girl does not marry until she is eighteen or nineteen.

There are a great many accomplishments which it is necessary for a
Japanese girl of good family to know. The knowledge of needlework is so
general that it really is not considered an accomplishment. But the art
of letter-writing must be known by all accomplished young ladies, and
the tea ceremony, which is the strictest and most complicated of all the
ceremonies which surround the cultured Japanese, must be thoroughly
learned by the daughter of the house. Each movement is regulated by
custom, and a mistake in turn of hand or position of the body or the
omission of any of the minute details in regard to the bows and
salutations in offering, receiving, and returning the cups would show a
lack of proper training. The young girl is taught the arrangement of
flowers, which is an art by itself in Japan. In the sitting-room of a
Japanese home there is a single vase of flowers sitting in the tiny
alcove, and they would lose half of their attraction if they were not in
some manner symbolical in tone and colour with the picture upon the
kakemono which hangs above them. The young girl is often taught to play
upon the koto, a kind of zither, although the national musical
instrument is the samisen, which is played everywhere—at home, in
story-tellers’ halls and theatres, and at every tea-house party. Girls
start to learn this instrument at a very early age, because it is
necessary to learn it while the fingers are still pliant. It takes time
to learn these instruments, as there are no scores and the tunes must be
committed to memory. Women teachers come to the home to teach the girls
in all these arts, and often the samisen teacher has been a famous
geisha, whose support now is teaching the music that once made her
welcome at the dinner-parties of gay Japan.

[Illustration:

  AN OUTDOOR KITCHEN IN JAPAN.

  To face p. 290.]

After mastering the accomplishments, her business in life is now to
marry, and few Japanese maidens think seriously of any other lot in life
than that of marrying and becoming the mothers of future Japanese. Japan
is more progressive than any other Oriental country, if we except
Burmah, in that it allows the girl to exercise a certain amount of
choice in the selection of a husband. There are never cases of love
matches, but if she positively objects to a man who is proposed to her,
she is seldom forced to marry him. It would be thought most immodest if
she refused to marry a man until she loved him, as love is supposed to
come with marriage and the advent of the children. Only simple
toleration is expected before the marriage. The offices of a go-between
are asked to assist in the search for a husband or wife, unless the
match is made by friends of the interested parties. When the future
husband has been selected, the go-between, who must always be a married
man, as his wife takes an important part in the transactions, brings
about a meeting of the young couple as if by accident. They may be
strolling in a garden looking at the hanging wistaria, or meet at a
theatre, where the families are introduced, and the two most concerned
have a chance to take a good look at each other, and the next day, when
the anxious match-maker comes to the house to learn whether his choice
has met with favour, they will give their consent, or the match will be
broken off, and the go-between will start again the hunt for an eligible
alliance. If everything is satisfactory, a lucky day is appointed for
the formal proposal, presents are exchanged, and then all look forward
to the wedding. A couple of days before the wedding the bride’s
trousseau and household goods are sent to her new home, and its
elaborateness is only limited by the father’s wealth. Yet there are some
things considered indispensable in the outfit of a bride, such as a
bureau, a writing-table, a work-box, two of the little trays on which
meals are served, together with the full dining outfit, and two or more
complete sets of bed furnishings. If she is of a rich family, quite
likely the clothing she will bring with her will last her entire life,
as styles do not change so radically as to make gowns go so completely
out of fashion that they cannot be worn. A wedding is a most expensive
proceeding for the father of the bride, as each member of the groom’s
family—father, mother, brothers, sisters, aunts, and cousins, even the
servants—must all receive a present to mark the joyous occasion. The
wedding itself is in the presence of only a few witnesses, and consists
in a few formal acts, the most important of which is the drinking “three
times three” cups of saki together. To make the marriage conform to the
laws of Japan, the bride’s name is removed from her family register and
transferred to that of her husband’s family.

After the ceremony there are entertainments in the new home and at the
home of the bride’s parents, and then the couple settle down into the
married state for two or three months, when the ultra-smart give a
series of entertainments to the friends who had no formal announcement
of the marriage.

The young wife does not have the happiness of setting up an
establishment of her own, but she must go to the home of her husband’s
father. The mother-in-law question is a very serious one in Japan,
because she is absolutely the head of the household, and the young wife
has to submit in all things to her mother-in-law’s will. This is
especially serious for the modern Japanese girl, who perhaps has been
educated in the Government school, if she is compelled to go to the home
of a conservative old-time woman. Naturally, the mother cannot
understand why the ideas with which she herself was brought up should
not be good enough for the other, and finds fault with, what are in her
eyes, outlandish ways introduced by the new regime. These conservative
women are always loud in praise of the old state of things, and believe
that the world is going to ruin, socially, morally, and physically,
because of the innovations brought into their homes by their progressive
sons and daughters.

In addition to the parents of her husband, the wife has to win the
affection of his brothers, sisters-in-law, and sisters, and her life is
often made intolerable by the envies, jealousies, and petty
faultfindings of the many women beneath the new roof-tree. The
patriarchal life prevails in Japan as in all Eastern countries, and the
successful man finds he must support a crowd of less successful
relatives, whose claims are not admitted by law, but whose appeals on
the score of kinship cannot be ignored, as custom allows those related
by blood or marriage to look for help to the least unfortunate among
them. The new civil code forces the support of parents, brothers,
sisters, and other near relatives upon the head of the household, in
addition to that of his wife and children. Thus a man is handicapped in
life and has to spend the money he might otherwise use in educating his
children in the support of uncles, aunts, and cousins, and perhaps a
host of his wife’s relations. From the social point of view this is
undoubtedly an excellent system, as it relieves the nation of the
support of its poor, but it bears heavily upon the individual, and many
a young man’s ambition has been shattered and his road to success
blocked by the sordid cares and petty troubles caused by the necessity
of maintaining a large household.

The great authority on the conduct of women who marry was written by a
Japanese scholar, based on the teaching of the Chinese sages. In it the
wife is told she must give unconditional obedience to her husband, who
is in every respect her superior and the absolute lord and master of her
body and soul; whatever he does is right and she may not even murmur.
She occupies a position in her husband’s household practically of an
upper servant. She must not frequent public resorts, nor go sight-seeing
with the wealth her husband may obtain, and until she is forty years old
is not to be seen in company, but to remain at home attending to her
household and her children. This sounds very well, but women are women
the world over; and although Japanese wives are gentle, docile, and
obedient, yet they have a virility and strength of character that compel
the respect of their husbands, and in their own domain their word is
law.

In the olden time each Japanese girl was supposed to know the precepts
contained in a book called “Greater Learning for Women,” written by a
famous scholar several hundred years ago. For nearly two hundred years
it was one of the indispensable articles that a bride took with her to
her new home, but the present modern Japanese maiden knows very little
of the “Greater Learning.” I am afraid, indeed, that she is more
thoroughly conversant with a parody of these famous precepts, which has
been written by a young man of modern Japan. This is so radical that it
is forbidden in the libraries of the mission schools in the fear that
the Japanese girl will imbibe too early the tendencies fatal to the
happiness of the Eastern woman, as she takes her first step from her
secluded doorway into the path that leads to the higher learning of the
Western world.

Japanese women are womanly, kindly, gentle, and pretty, and perhaps they
owe this gentleness and courtesy to the precepts taught by their old
sages.

According to Shingoro Takaishi, in his “Wisdom and Women of Japan,” the
famous moralist left the following instructions to help women in their
perilous journey through life—

“Seeing that it is a girl’s destiny, on reaching womanhood, to go to a
new home, and live in submission to her father-in-law, it is even more
incumbent upon her than it is on a boy to receive with all reverence her
parents’ instructions. Should her parents, through their tenderness,
allow her to grow up self-willed, she will infallibly show herself
capricious in her husband’s house, and thus alienate his affection;
while, if her father-in-law be a man of correct principles, the girl
will find the yoke of these principles intolerable. She will hate and
decry her father-in-law, and the end of these domestic dissensions will
be her dismissal from her husband’s house and the covering of herself
with ignominy. Her parents, forgetting the faulty education they gave
her, may, indeed, lay all the blame on the father-in-law. But they will
be in error; for the whole disaster should rightly be attributed to the
faulty education the girl received from her parents.

“More precious in a woman is a virtuous heart than a face of beauty. The
vicious woman’s heart is ever excited; she glares wildly around her, she
vents her anger on others, her words are harsh and her accent vulgar.
When she speaks it is to set herself above others, to upbraid others, to
envy others, to be puffed up with individual pride, to jeer at others,
to outdo others—all things at variance with the way in which a woman
should walk. The only qualities that befit a woman are gentle obedience,
chastity, mercy, and quietness.

“A woman has no particular lord. She must look to her husband as her
lord, and must serve him with all worship and reverence, not despising
or thinking lightly of him. The great lifelong duty of a woman is
obedience.

“A woman shall be divorced for disobedience to her father-in-law or
mother-in-law. A woman shall be divorced if she fail to bear children,
the reason for this rule being that women are sought in marriage for the
purpose of giving men posterity. A barren woman should, however, be
retained if her heart be virtuous and her conduct correct and free from
jealousy, in which case a child of the same blood must be adopted;
neither is there any just cause for a man to divorce a barren wife if he
have children by a concubine. Lewdness is a reason for divorce. Jealousy
is a reason for divorce. Leprosy or any like foul disease is a reason
for divorce. A woman shall be divorced who, by talking overmuch and
prattling disrespectfully, disturbs the harmony of kinsmen and brings
trouble on her household. A woman shall be divorced who is addicted to
stealing.

“All the ‘Seven Reasons for Divorce’ were taught by the sage. A woman
once married and then divorced has wandered from the ‘way,’ and is
covered with great shame, even if she should enter into a second union
with a man of wealth and position.

“It is the chief duty of a girl living in the parental house to practise
filial piety towards her father and mother. But after marriage her duty
is to honour her father-in-law and mother-in-law, to honour them beyond
her father and mother, to love and reverence them with all ardour, and
to tend them with practise of every filial piety. While thou honourest
thine own parents, think not lightly of thy father-in-law. Never should
a woman fail, night and morning, to pay her respects to her
father-in-law and mother-in-law. Never should she be remiss in
performing any tasks they may require of her. With all reverence must
she carry out, and never rebel against, her father-in-law’s commands. On
every point must she inquire of her father-in-law and mother-in-law, and
abandon herself to their direction. Even if thy father-in-law and
mother-in-law be pleased to hate and vilify thee, be not angry with
them, and murmur not. If thou carry piety towards them to its utmost
limits, and minister to them in all sincerity, it cannot be but that
they will end by becoming friendly to thee.”

There is a sword of Damocles always hanging over the head of the
Japanese woman—that is, the fear of divorce. Among the higher classes
the dread of scandal and gossip serves as a restraint upon the too free
use of the power of divorce, but even now one meets many respectable and
respected persons who, some time in their life, have gone through such
an experience. Obtaining a divorce is not such a complicated affair as
it is in America. It is enough that the parties agree to separate and
make a declaration, witnessed by two reputable witnesses, at a local
magistrate’s office, and the divorce takes place by mutual consent. As
in the case of marriage the consent of the parents or guardians of a
girl under twenty-five years of age and a man who is under thirty must
be obtained, so this consent of parents or guardians is necessary before
a divorce may be granted. Then the domicile of the wife is retransferred
in the books of the registrar from the domicile of the family in which
she was married to that of her original family. If one of the parties
concerned refuse to give their consent to the divorce an application is
made to the courts. There are several grounds upon which judicial
divorce is granted—first, for bigamy; secondly, the wife may be divorced
for adultery, but not the husband, unless the crime has been committed
with a married woman, when the unfaithful wife and her lover are liable
to penal servitude for a term not exceeding two years, if the charge is
brought by the outraged husband. The man cannot be punished alone; the
woman must share his fate. As in many European countries, marriage is
forbidden between the respondent and the co-respondent in a divorce
case.

Another, and one of the chief causes for divorce in Japan, are the
complications that naturally arise from the many people living in one
house. Either party may seek divorce if ill-treated or insulted by the
parents or grandparents of the other, and mothers-in-law, with their
hard tongues and bitter words, are the frequent causes of separation of
husband and wife. One provision of the law which serves to make most
mothers endure any evil of their married life rather than sue for
divorce is the fact that the children belong to the father, and the
mother returns childless to her father’s house. In this country, where
the woman is economically dependent upon her menfolk, even if she were
allowed to take the children, quite likely they would not be made
welcome in a home where there are always too many mouths to feed;
therefore the Japanese mother puts up with many brutalities and
heartaches in order to keep with her the only bright things she has in
life, her children.

The Japanese wife leads a very busy life. In all but the very wealthiest
and most aristocratic families the wife and daughters do a large part of
the housework. In a house with no furniture, no carpets, no pictures, no
stoves or furnaces, no windows to wash, no latest styles to be imitated
in the making of clothing, there is not so much work in the care of a
house as there is in the Western world, where the rooms are filled with
a multitude of unnecessary articles that seem only made to give toil to
women. But because of the lack of conveniences it takes time to properly
care for the rooms in a Japanese house. Every morning there are the beds
to be rolled up and placed in the closets, the mosquito-nets to be taken
down, the rooms to be swept, dusted, and aired; and the veranda floor is
polished several times a day as if it were a precious piece of silver.
The cooking and washing of the dishes take a great deal of time, as the
former is done over a tiny charcoal stove and the dishes are washed in
cold water. There is not a moment of time that the wife is idle, as
there is always the family sewing to be superintended, the mats and
cushions to be recovered, the wadding to be renewed in the bed coverings
and the winter kimonas. Many of the Japanese dresses must be taken to
pieces whenever they are washed, and the wet breadths smoothed upon a
board and placed in the sun to dry. The careful housewife makes over the
older daughters’ dresses for the younger daughters, and these clothes
are washed, turned, dyed, and made over and over again so long as there
is a shred of the original material left to work upon.

The Japanese believe that a woman passes through three critical stages
in her journey through life. If she passes her nineteenth, her
thirty-third, and her thirty-seventh years safely, she has a chance of
living to a good old age and seeing her children and her grandchildren
grow up around her. Her most critical year is her thirty-third, and not
only this year itself, but the years immediately preceding and following
are considered inauspicious. Consequently there are three years during
which period women will refrain as much as possible from acts which may
appear like tempting Providence. When a woman attains her sixtieth
birthday it is an occasion for great festivities, when she invites all
her friends to a dinner to celebrate this wonderful event. If a man or
woman should have occasion to celebrate their seventieth birthday, they
distribute among their friends and relatives large red and white cakes
with the character signifying “longevity” written upon them, and with
each increasing year the old man or woman gain in the respect of their
community.

When the last illness comes to father and mother it would be considered
most unfilial for any of the children not to be present at the parent’s
death-bed. When all is over the son or the wife wets his lips with
water, and so universal is this custom that the expression “to wet the
dying lips with water” has come to signify the tending of a patient in
his last illness. One of the reasons why the Japanese believe that the
wife should be younger than the husband is that she may be able to
fulfil this last office for her loved one.

It is known that death is in the room by the placing upside down of a
screen before the bed, and the quilt covering the body is reversed, the
foot covering the dead man’s breast. A white cloth is laid over the
face, as its exposure would be an obstacle to the soul’s journey on its
road to the other world. Everything done for the dead is the reverse of
that done for the living; for example, in the tub for the last bath cold
water is poured first, then hot water added until it is of the right
temperature. The head is shaved by touching it with the razor in small
patches instead of running it continuously as in life. The burial
garment is made by two women relatives, sewing with the same piece of
thread in opposite directions, and the kimona is folded from right to
left instead of from left to right as a man would wear it ordinarily.
Mittens, leggings, and sandals are worn, the sandals being tied on the
foot with the heel in the place of the toe, to signify that the dead
must not return, drawn back by the love of the world. Around the neck is
suspended a bag of Buddhist charms, and a small coin, or picture of a
coin, with which to pay the ferryman. If the wife dies, the husband does
not publicly mourn for her, although her children do; but if the husband
dies the wife should mourn the rest of her life, and she often cuts off
her long hair and places it in the coffin of her husband, showing that
she resolves to be always faithful to his memory. In a child’s coffin a
doll is placed to keep the child company on its first journey without
mother or father. The last rite is to cover the body with incense-powder
or dried aniseed, and then it is ready for the funeral ceremonies.

A funeral procession in Japan is an imposing affair. The corpse, in its
palanquin or in the modern hearse, is preceded by men carrying large
white lanterns on poles, bundles of flowers stuck in bamboo pedestals,
stands of artificial flowers, and birds in enormous cages, which are set
free at the temples as an act of merit. The priests, friends, and
relatives move slowly and sadly to the temple, in which there is a
service, then the bier is taken to the crematory by the chief mourner
and the near relatives. The ashes are removed the next day to their
permanent home in the public crematorium or in the temple burying-ground
of the family.

For fifty days after the death incense and lights are kept burning
before the tablet of the deceased at his late home, and prayers are
offered at the grave for the same length of time. A priest comes from
the temple every seventh day to offer incense and prayers with the
sorrowing family, who believe that for forty-nine days the spirit of
their dead wanders in the dark space that lies between this world and
the next. Every seventh day it makes a step forward and is helped by the
prayers of loved ones left behind. The sorrowing wife is taught that the
spirit cannot tear itself away from its old home and hovers over it, and
unless it is absolutely necessary no loving woman would remove from her
home until the forty-nine days were past, for fear of giving sorrow to
the spirit of her husband, if he did not find her in the place where
they had passed together their years of happiness.

The dead are not quickly forgotten in Japan. Memorial services take
place the forty-eighth day, the hundredth day, and the first anniversary
of the death, and services are held for even fifty years. Lafcadio Hearn
expresses the reverence which these people give their loved ones who
have gone before them by saying:—

“In this worship we give the dead they are made divine. And the thought
of this tender reverence will temper with consolation the melancholy
that comes with age to all of us. Never in our Japan are the dead too
quickly forgotten; by simple faith they are still thought to dwell among
their beloved and their place within the home remains holy. When we pass
to the land of shadows we know that loving lips will nightly murmur our
names before the family shrine, that our faithful ones will beseech us
in their pain and bless us in their joy. We will not be left alone upon
the hillside, but loving hands will place before our tablet the fruit
and flowers and dainty food that we were wont to like, and will pour for
us the fragrant cup of tea or amber rice-wine. Strange changes are
coming upon this land, old customs are vanishing, old beliefs are
weakening, the thoughts of to-day will not be the thoughts of to-morrow;
but of all this we will know nothing. We dream that for us as for our
mothers the little lamps will burn on through the generations; we see in
fancy the yet unborn, the children of our children’s children, bowing
their tiny heads and making the filial obeisance before the tablet that
bears our family name.”




                               CONCLUSION


The ocean that geographically divides the East from the West is not more
wide nor deep than is that invisible ocean between the minds of the
woman of the Orient and the woman of the Occident. A sympathetic
understanding between peoples whose ideals have been so differently
constructed, and who have had such radically opposite training, is next
to impossible. No matter what the Western woman may do in the hope of
touching the emotional life of the woman of the East, she soon finds
that further progress is barred, that a gate before unseen has closed,
shutting her out from the inner life.

I knew a very advanced woman in Southern India who had broken caste and
who went about freely, mingling with both Europeans and Indians with the
same freedom as an American woman would. She dressed in a costume
partially Indian and partially European, wore slippers, and arranged her
hair in the European fashion. One day I went to her house rather earlier
than the usual hour for calling. I hardly recognized her, as she was the
Indian woman of the home, dressed in a sari, her hair hanging down her
back in braids, and with heavy anklets over her bare feet. She blushed
and said: “Oh, I do not want you to see me like this,” and she did not
understand me when I told her that I felt that I was seeing the real
woman for the first time.

I thought many times in my long residence in the East that I had really
entered into the life and understood the thoughts, hopes, and ambitions
of the Eastern woman, when at some thoughtless word or action on my part
a wall of fog would come between us, with a thick, impenetrable,
blanket-like mist, made up of custom, tradition, and the results of
environment, and when it would lift we would find our little boats far
from each other on a sea of mutual misunderstanding.

Despite our incapacity to enter into the soul life of this ancient East,
we find ourselves fascinated and bewitched by the charm of these
secluded women of the Orient, who live a life of instinctive
unselfishness, their days given to the making of happiness for others.

We say: “Must there always remain the width of the world between the
Eastern woman and the woman of the West? Will the education which is
being grasped so eagerly by the woman of the Orient lessen the distance,
and will it break down the barriers?” Only time will tell. The children
of the present boys and girls in school and college will have had the
foundation of the three generations of intellectual training, and will
have learned to take what is best for them from Western knowledge and
use it as a means of breaking the iron bands of ignorance, superstition,
and loyalty to old-time custom and tradition, which stands an immovable
mountain in the pathway of true friendship between the woman of the West
and the woman of the East.


     UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON




------------------------------------------------------------------------




Transcriber’s note:

 1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.

 2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.

 3. The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed
    in the public domain.